Saturday, December 28, 2019

Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.  I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.

Ted Chiang, Exhalation

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Jesus said:  If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. 

The Gospel of Thomas, as noted by Elaine Pagels

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Our struggle in life requires two virtues, bravery and wisdom -- readiness to endure a danger and skillful knowledge of how to manage it.

Gorgias (the Sophist)

Saturday, December 21, 2019

There are intelligible principles inherent in the matter of every phenomenon; because matter is essentially the sum of all the seemings that it has for any and all persons. 

Protagoras (the Sophist)



Wednesday, December 11, 2019

All things must be either limiting, or unlimited, or both limiting and unlimited.  Since things cannot consist either of the limiting alone or of the unlimited alone ... we must obviously conclude that the universe and its contents are fitted together and harmonized by a combination of the limiting and the unlimited.

For if everything that is were unlimited, there would not be anything of such a character that it could be recognized.

Philolaus  (a Pythagorean)


Monday, December 09, 2019

Tuesday, December 03, 2019

We must not rivet ourselves so fast to our humours and complexions: our chiefest sufficiency is to know how to apply ourselves to divers employments.
 

The principal use of reading to me is, that by various objects it rouses my reason, and employs my judgment, not my memory. 

Montaigne