The category of first sentence makes sense only if it is looking forward to the development of thematic concerns it perhaps only dimly foreshadows. - Stanley Fish

We marvel at them; we read them aloud to our friends and spouses, even, occasionally, to passersby; we analyze them; we lament our inability to match them.

Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. The shaping power of language cannot be avoided. We cannot choose to distance ourselves from it. We can only choose to employ it in one way rather than another.

The idea — the core idea of humanism — is that the act of reading about great deeds will lead you to imitate them,..