Coleridge's Aphorisms
"As a fruit-tree is more valuable than any one of its fruits singly, or even then all its fruits of a single season, so the noblest object of reflection is the mind itself, by which we reflect" (Coleridge 5).
This little nugget of truth really stuck out to me. I thought about that saying about how if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish you feed him for a lifetime. Or the story about Jack and the beanstalk and how the giant had a goose that lay golden eggs and some people would just grab one golden egg, but if you grabbed the goose you could have countless golden eggs. So what is the fruit or reflections of our minds? I think it's the abolition of nonage. The more we think, the more we discover; the more we discover, the more we grow our own ideas. And those ideas that we grow are the fruit, don't you think?
I loved what Wordsworth had to say about what it means to be a poet and how poetry is cultivated from passion. As a poet and lover of poetry, his words really stuck out to me. I especially appreciate his phrase "poetry is the image of man and nature." Though he wrote quite a lot of poetry that had to do with nature, I think Wordsworth might also be hitting on the relationship between poetry and the inner nature of man. So often, the poetry that resonates most with us (or at least with me) is that which speaks to our untold thoughts and passions, things we couldn't express or put into words on our own.
I commented on Carmen and Noah's posts.
This little nugget of truth really stuck out to me. I thought about that saying about how if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish you feed him for a lifetime. Or the story about Jack and the beanstalk and how the giant had a goose that lay golden eggs and some people would just grab one golden egg, but if you grabbed the goose you could have countless golden eggs. So what is the fruit or reflections of our minds? I think it's the abolition of nonage. The more we think, the more we discover; the more we discover, the more we grow our own ideas. And those ideas that we grow are the fruit, don't you think?
I loved what Wordsworth had to say about what it means to be a poet and how poetry is cultivated from passion. As a poet and lover of poetry, his words really stuck out to me. I especially appreciate his phrase "poetry is the image of man and nature." Though he wrote quite a lot of poetry that had to do with nature, I think Wordsworth might also be hitting on the relationship between poetry and the inner nature of man. So often, the poetry that resonates most with us (or at least with me) is that which speaks to our untold thoughts and passions, things we couldn't express or put into words on our own.
I commented on Carmen and Noah's posts.
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