Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the vastness of knowledge and the limitations of time in attempting to learn it.
John Edward Williams reflects on the experience of a scholar who, despite being deeply engrossed in reading, becomes acutely aware of his own ignorance and the overwhelming amount of knowledge yet to be absorbed. This realization brings a sense of urgency and melancholy as he acknowledges the limited time available in life to satisfy his thirst for learning.
In practice
In a speech about lifelong learning, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of continuous education.
A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that’s left is the brute, the creature that we—you and I and others like us—have brought up from the slime.
The love of literature, of language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print—the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly.
Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas.
all that paddling around in the alphabet soup of one's childhood, scooping up letters, hoping to arrange them into enlightening sentences that would explain why things had turned out the way they had. It evoked a certain mutiny in me.
The acquisition of literacy is one of the most important epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. To our knowledge, no other species ever acquired it.
I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.
There's no better way to inform and expand you mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature.
Middle-class families know education begins at birth.
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