"To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius; a vital appropriating exercise of mind closely allied to that which first created it"
About this Quote
Alger is taking a swing at the lazy way we treat wisdom: as something you can collect, repeat, and cash in without paying the mental price of ownership. The line flatters the maxim-maker, sure, but its sharper move is to elevate the maxim-user. A “valuable maxim” isn’t a fortune cookie; it’s compressed experience. To “use correctly” is to reverse-engineer the compression, to unfold the circumstances, assumptions, and moral tradeoffs that made the sentence true in the first place. That’s why he insists it “requires a genius”: not because quoting is hard, but because application is creative labor.
The subtext is a rebuke of secondhand intellect. Alger writes in a 19th-century American culture enamored of aphorisms, sermons, self-improvement manuals, and the emerging industry of uplift. In that world, maxims circulate like moral currency. Alger warns that currency gets counterfeit fast when people spend it without understanding. His phrase “vital appropriating exercise” is doing a lot of work: appropriation here isn’t theft, it’s assimilation. The mind must metabolize the maxim until it becomes situational judgment, not decorative rhetoric.
There’s also a quiet democratic tension. Maxims feel egalitarian because anyone can repeat them. Alger argues that real equality comes only when readers become co-creators, reenacting the original act of insight under new conditions. The wit is restrained, but the critique is pointed: parroting wisdom is cheap; making it live again is the rare skill.
The subtext is a rebuke of secondhand intellect. Alger writes in a 19th-century American culture enamored of aphorisms, sermons, self-improvement manuals, and the emerging industry of uplift. In that world, maxims circulate like moral currency. Alger warns that currency gets counterfeit fast when people spend it without understanding. His phrase “vital appropriating exercise” is doing a lot of work: appropriation here isn’t theft, it’s assimilation. The mind must metabolize the maxim until it becomes situational judgment, not decorative rhetoric.
There’s also a quiet democratic tension. Maxims feel egalitarian because anyone can repeat them. Alger argues that real equality comes only when readers become co-creators, reenacting the original act of insight under new conditions. The wit is restrained, but the critique is pointed: parroting wisdom is cheap; making it live again is the rare skill.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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