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.
Interpretation
Books are powerful tools that connect the spirit of the times with enduring knowledge.
In this quote, Johann Georg Hamann emphasizes the profound role that books play in bridging the gap between human consciousness and the progression of time. He suggests that books not only embody the spirit of their era but also possess a lasting significance that transcends the physical materials they are made from, showcasing their importance in our intellectual and cultural journeys.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literacy, one could reference this quote to highlight how books shape our understanding of the world.
Being, belief and reason are pure relations, which cannot be dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic concepts, signs for understanding, not for worshipping, aids to awaken our attention, not to fetter it.
The weakness of ourselves and of our reason makes us see flaws in beauties by making us consider everything piece by piece.
Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it.
Every phenomenon of nature was a word, - the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas.
Everything is vain and tortures the spirit instead of calming and satisfying it.
Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.
Hypersegregated inner-city schools - in which one finds no more than five or ten white children, at the very most, within a student population of as many as 3,000 - are the norm, not the exception, in most northern urban areas today.
No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.
There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books.
Let there be nothing harmonious about our children's playthings, lest they grow up expecting peace and order, and be eaten alive.
Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.
Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for such a day, or the best amusement,—call it which you will,—is a book of travels, describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one
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