85
" 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
86
" embroiderers.” Rather than majoring in frivolities, women should be educated in useful subjects and “be furnished with a stock of ideas, and principles, and qualifications, and habits, ready to be applied and appropriated” in accordance with the roles to which they might be called. For, she continued, “when a man of sense comes to marry, it is a companion whom he wants, and not an artist. "
― Karen Swallow Prior , Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist
89
" Milton puts it most profoundly when he says, Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion. Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. In other words, the power of truth lies not in abstract propositions but in the understanding and willful application of truth by living, breathing persons which can occur only in the context of liberty. "
― Karen Swallow Prior , Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me