If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.
Interpretation
Language distinguishes humans from animals, enabling complex communication and thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote emphasizes the importance of language in human development. Without the ability to articulate thoughts and ideas, humanity would remain primitive, lacking the sophisticated communication that advances culture, knowledge, and civilization. Language is not just a tool for communication; it is a defining characteristic of what it means to be human.
In practice
In a speech about education, one might quote this to highlight the role of language in 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?
The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read.
Life-Enriching Education: an education that prepares children to learn throughout their lives, relate well to others, and themselves, be creative, flexible, and venturesome, and have empathy not only for their immediate kin but for all of humankind.
Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.
Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
Out of the homes of America will come the future citizens of America, and only as those homes are what they should be will this nation be what it should be.
Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from its clutches.
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