Let us not forget the genial miraculous force we have known to proceed from a book.
Interpretation
Books hold a powerful and transformative influence over our lives.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the profound impact that books have on individuals and society. He suggests that the knowledge, inspiration, and ideas contained within books can lead to miraculous changes, reminding us of the importance of literature in shaping our thoughts and actions.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literacy, one could cite Emerson's perspective on the transformative power of books.
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?
For some years now I have read through the Bible twice every year. If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of these branches because I wanted to know what it was and what it meant.
Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
Society has provided [children] no rituals by which they become members of the tribe, of the community. All children need to be twice born, to learn to function rationally in the present world, leaving childhood behind.
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