The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.
Interpretation
Understanding is important but can be misleading and requires cautious interpretation.
In this quote, Thomas De Quincey suggests that while understanding is a crucial element of human cognition, it can also be superficial and inadequate. He warns that over-reliance on mere understanding can lead to misinterpretations and errors, indicating that deeper insight and critical thinking are necessary for true wisdom.
In practice
In a discussion on education, you might use this quote to highlight the importance of critical thinking over rote learning.
But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.
Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.
Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.
I stood checked for a moment - awe, not fear, fell upon me - and whist I stood, a solemn wind began to blow, the most mournful that ever ear heard. Mournful! That is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries.
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium!
Flowers that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their coloring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children - honored as the jewelry of God.
We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don't. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success.
If you want to give light to others you have to glow yourself.
We are not asked to SEE," said Amy. "Why need we when we KNOW?" We know--not the answer to the inevitable Why, but the incontestable fact that it is for the best. "It is an irreparable loss, but is it faith at all if it is 'hard to trust' when things are entirely bewildering?
Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.
The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about, yet refuse to investigate.
The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.
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