Meek young men grow up in libraries.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that young men who are humble and eager to learn often find knowledge and personal growth in libraries.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote highlights the importance of humility and the pursuit of knowledge. It implies that young men who possess a meek disposition are more likely to immerse themselves in literature and education, fostering their growth and intellectual development. The library serves as a metaphorical sanctuary where wisdom is acquired, and it emphasizes that a modest approach to learning can lead to profound self-improvement and understanding.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech at a graduation ceremony to emphasize the value of continuous learning.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Through my education, I didn't just develop skills, I didn't just develop the ability to learn, but I developed confidence.
I read everything. I'll read a John Grisham novel, I'll sit and read a whole book of poems by Maya Angelou, or I'll just read some Mary Oliver - this is a book that was given to me for Christmas. No particular genre. And I read in French, and I read in German, and I read in English. I love to see how other people use language.
Study after study affirms what I saw in the classroom every day as superintendent of Denver Public Schools: Nothing makes a bigger difference for student learning than great teaching.
I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.
If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the reward; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness always punished, he will grow into a man who only thinks about how he may get on in the world, and does right or wrong according as he finds advantage to himself.
When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.
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