A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.
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There are successful scholars, public-spirited scholars, upright scholars, cautious scholars, and those who are merely petty men.
Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.
The difficulties in the study of the infinite arise because we attempt, with our finite minds, to discuss the infinite, assigning to it those properties which we give to the finite and limited; but this... is wrong, for we cannot speak of infinite quantities as being the one greater or less than or equal to another.
We have invented the literature because the reality wasn't imaginative enough and we also wanted to be alone, at least for a while!
In this external world, which is full of finite things, it is impossible to see and find the Infinite. The Infinite must be sought in that alone which is infinite, and the only thing infinite about us is that which is within us, our own soul. Neither the body, nor the mind, nor even our thoughts, nor the world we see around us, is infinite.
Part of my methodological approach is made explicit when I discuss ways in which literature can have philosophical significance. Literature doesn't typically argue - and when it does, it's deadly dull. But literature can supply the frame within which we come to observe and reason, or it can change our frame in highly significant ways. That's one of the achievements I'd claim for Mann, and for Death in Venice.
The great subversive works of children's literature suggest that there are other views of human life besides those of the shopping mall and the corporation. They mock current assumptions and express the imaginative, unconventional, noncommercial view of the world in its simplest and purest form. They appeal to the imaginative, questioning, rebellious child within all of us, renew our instinctive energy, and act as a force for change. This is why such literature is worthy of our attention and will endure long after more conventional tales have been forgotten.
If you want to observe anger in its entirety, you will have to observe it alone, in the privacy of your room. Then alone can you see it in its fullness, for then there are no limitations. This is why I advise the pillow meditation to certain people, so that they can observe their anger fully.
...the tale that's told for no other reason but companionship, which is another (and my favorite) definition of literature, the tale that's told for companionship and to teach something religious, of religious reverence, about real life, in this real world which literature should (and here does) reflect.
No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light!
Don't look back—forward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patience—then alone can great deeds be accomplished.
Hindu religious literature, indeed all religious literature, is full of illustrations to prove the truth.
I suppose you could sum up the religious aspects of my boyhood by saying it was a time of life when I was taught the difference between right and wrong as it specifically applied to Catholicism.
Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.
Literature as a whole is not an aggregate of exhibits with red and blue ribbons attached to them, like a cat-show, but the range of articulate human imagination as it extends from the height of imaginative heaven to the depth of imaginative hell.
Observe the life like a wise tree by the side of a calm lake! Do not move; just sit and observe! Observe the Sun, observe the storms; observe the wisdom, observe the stupidities!
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