What matters here are the works - finally without them his life would be uninteresting. What matters, that is, are the astonishing things that he left behind. If we can get the life in relation to the works, then it can take off.
Interpretation
The value of a person's life is reflected in their contributions and achievements rather than their existence alone.
In this quote, Stephen Greenblatt emphasizes that a person's legacy and the impact they leave behind through their works are what truly define their life. He suggests that without these remarkable contributions, life can seem dull or unremarkable, and that by appreciating the relationship between life and works, we can fully honor and understand someone's existence.
In practice
During a commencement speech, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of striving for meaningful achievements in life.
I've been at this for 40 years. And, as an academic, I've been content with relatively small audiences, with the thought that the audience I long for will find its way eventually to what I have written, provided that what I have written is good enough.
What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.
The exercise of reason is not available only to specialists; it is accessible to everyone.
Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.
The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.
I believe in broken, fractured, complicated narratives, but I believe in narratives as a vehicle for truth, not simply as a form of entertainment, though I love entertainment, but also a way of conveying what needs to be conveyed about the works that I care about.
In every adult there lurks a child— an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the personality which wants to develop and become whole.
For my part, I love to stand foot to foot with an honest foeman. To open warfare, bold and true hearts raise no objection but the ground of quarrel; it is covert enmity which we have most cause to fear, and best reason to loathe. That crafty kindness which inveigles me to sacrifice principle is the serpent in the grass - deadly to the incautious wayfarer.
All activities and events that a body is to go through are determined at the time of conception.
Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment.
Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individual.
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
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