Meaning of “his quick imagination transfigured the hard, bare facts…”

Books give Keller a realm of freedom and belonging in which physical barriers matter less than imagination, language, and thought.

Dickinson turns reading into a form of travel: language can carry a reader beyond physical limits without requiring wealth, distance, or transportation.

The sentence resists a single narrow standard of beauty and asks the critic to remain open to excellence appearing through different periods, types and schools.

Creative attention turns a wide range of experience into material; knowledge that seems unrelated can later supply images, comparisons or instruction.

Franklin identifies reading as an early habit that shaped his self-education, curiosity, writing, and later public life.

Emerson rejects passive reverence for books: their best use is to awaken the reader’s own active thought rather than replace it.