63 Quotes by William Deresiewicz

No real excellence, personal or social, artistic, philosophical, scientific, or moral, can arise without solitude.

Practical utility, however, is not the ultimate purpose of a liberal arts education. Its ultimate purpose is to help you learn to reflect in the widest and deepest sense, beyond the requirements of work and career: for the sake of citizenship, for the sake of living well with others, above all, for the sake of building a self that is strong and creative and free.

College, after all, as those who like to denigrate it often say, is “not the real world.” But that is precisely itsstrength.

Now students all seem to be converging on the same self, the successful upper-middle-class professional, impersonating the adult they've already decided they want to become.

There's a reason elite schools speak of training leaders, not thinkers - holders of power, not its critics.

I believe librarians, like English teachers, sit at the right hand of God.

Depression means self-loathing, self-disgust, and the kind of emotional numbness that feels like psychic death.

(...) grabbing what you can get isn't any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists.

[Jane] Austen was not a novelist for nothing: she knew that our stories are what make us human, and that listening to someone else's stories -- entering into their feelings, validating their experiences -- is the highest way of acknowledging their humanity, the sweetest form of usefulness.