“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
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Ralph Waldo Emerson727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes
Penn Jillette (1955) American magician
p. 42 http://books.google.com/books?id=KsI3sswEg14C&pg=PA42&dq=%22reading+the+bible+is+the+fast+track+to+atheism%22 <br class="br">2010s, God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales (2011)
Steve Maraboli (1975)
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 90
Lori Wick American writer
Source: Where the Wild Rose Blooms
“Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.”
Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian
Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon
Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
“You know, you don’t really need me. All you need to do is read your own books.”
P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Context: I’ve always been interested in the Mother Goddess. Not long ago, a young person, whom I don’t know very well, sent a message to a mutual friend that said: “I’m an addict of Mary Poppins, and I want you to ask P. L. Travers if Mary Poppins is not really the Mother Goddess.” So, I sent back a message: “Well, I’ve only recently come to see that. She is either the Mother Goddess or one of her creatures — that is, if we’re going to look for mythological or fairy-tale origins of Mary Poppins.”
I’ve spent years thinking about it because the questions I’ve been asked, very perceptive questions by readers, have led me to examine what I wrote. The book was entirely spontaneous and not invented, not thought out. I never said, “Well, I’ll write a story about Mother Goddess and call it Mary Poppins.” It didn’t happen like that. I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned.
Once, when I was in the United States, I went to see a psychologist. It was during the war when I was feeling very cut off. I thought, Well, these people in psychology always want to see the kinds of things you’ve done, so I took as many of my books as were then written. I went and met the man, and he gave me another appointment. And at the next appointment the books were handed back to me with the words: “You know, you don’t really need me. All you need to do is read your own books.”
That was so interesting to me. I began to see, thinking about it, that people who write spontaneously as I do, not with invention, never really read their own books to learn from them. And I set myself to reading them. Every now and then I found myself saying, “But this is true. How did she know?” And then I realized that she is me. Now I can say much more about Mary Poppins because what was known to me in my blood and instincts has now come up to the surface in my head.
Source: H.H. LAUGHLIN: American Scientist. American Progressive. Nazi Collaborator.
