QuoteProject
You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Cherished memories from childhood can be more important than formal education in shaping a person's life.

This quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky emphasizes the profound impact that memories from our early years have on our lives. While formal education provides knowledge and skills, the beautiful and sacred memories we preserve can offer deeper emotional and psychological support throughout our lives. These memories can serve as a source of strength and comfort, guiding us in times of trouble and reminding us of the joy and innocence of childhood. Even a single cherished memory has the potential to sustain us and act as a means of salvation during difficult times.

Themes

EducationMemoriesChildhoodLifeSalvation

In practice

Example use cases

During a graduation speech to highlight the importance of personal experiences.

More from Fyodor Dostoevsky

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
What if, when this fog scatters and flies upward, the whole rotten, slimey city goes with it, rises with the fog and vanishes like smoke.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that if you have the guillotine in the forefront, and with such glee, it's for the sole reason that cutting heads off is the easiest thing, and having an idea is difficult!
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead

Similar quotes

It has always been my experience that, whatever groupings I choose for my books, the space in which I plan to lodge them necessarily reshapes my choice and, more important, in no time proves too small for them and forces me to change my arrangement. In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long. Like Nature, libraries abhor a vacuum, and the problem of space is inherent in the very nature of any collection of books.
Alberto ManguelRead
A basic element of the American dream is equal access to education as the lubricant of social and economic mobility.
Nicholas KristofRead
I have been a teacher myself all my life. I have an intense passion to share with people. Our only salvation is in knowledge, in learning.
Leo BuscagliaRead
The unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity.
Paulo FreireRead
Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, user’s manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest - and yet it is all these things.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves.
Robert Louis StevensonRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.