To learn a new language is, therefore, always a sort of spiritual adventure; it is like a journey of discovery in which we find a new world.
Interpretation
Learning a new language is an enriching experience that opens up new perspectives.
Ernst Cassirer suggests that acquiring a new language is not merely about vocabulary and grammar, but is a transformative journey that allows individuals to explore and understand a different culture and worldview. This process of discovery broadens one's horizons and deepens personal growth, akin to embarking on a spiritual adventure.
In practice
This quote can inspire students in a language class to see beyond just learning words.
Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging.
Knowledge of the name gives him who knows it mastery even over the being and will of the god.
A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.
The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone.
Rather, very, little, pretty - these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words. The constant use of the adjective little (except to indicate size) is particularly debilitating; we should all try to do a little better, we should all be very watchful of this rule, for it is a rather important one, and we are pretty sure to violate it now and then.
I cannot imagine myself fitting into the existing curriculum. I am too self-willed for that and have had my own very definite ideas for a long time, very different from the existing ways, as to how architecture is to be taught.
Teenagers are in some ways the best readers because their imaginations haven't been narrowed down by boring things like jobs and the realities of money and capitalism.
What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on.
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