Mark

“(The sheer delight to be found in reading other readers’ marginalia is unforgettably rendered in Billy Collins’s poem, “Marginalia.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books

“Religion comes from a Latin root meaning “to bind,” referring to the bond of obedience that characterizes the life of a member of a religious order. By extension, religion can be thought of as a bond of unity, as a process that “re-ligaments” or “re-ligatures,” tying disparate things back together into one, integrating diverse viewpoints.”
― Michael Ward, After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man

“Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.”1”
― Karen Swallow Prior, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books

“The ability to understand figurative language, in which “a word is both itself and something else,” is unique to human beings and, as one cognitive psychologist explains, “fundamental to how we think” in that it is the means by which we can “escape the literal and immediate.”27 We see this quality most dramatically in satire and allegory. Although very different, both satirical and allegorical language employ two levels of meaning: the literal meaning and the intended meaning. In satire, the intended meaning is the opposite of the stated words; in allegory, the intended meaning is symbolized by the stated words. Satire points to error, and allegory points to truth, but both require the reader to discern meaning beyond the surface level. In this way, allegory and satire—and less obviously, all literary language—reflect the transcendent nature of the human condition and the “double-willed self” described by Paul in Romans 7:19.28”
― Karen Swallow Prior, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books