tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50121982024-03-06T01:03:14.434-05:00A Commonplace BookA commonplace book: an old-fashioned literary diary for recording interesting items from reading you've done. I use mine to record snippets from reading, conversation and life in general. (The early 2003 entries are from a period some years ago -- before the blog age -- when I tried an online commonplace book as a straight web page.)Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.comBlogger676125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-35745580906145831432024-02-16T10:47:00.005-05:002024-02-16T10:47:55.543-05:00Love is what you've been through with somebody.James Thurber Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-64986021789312204992023-12-19T20:02:00.005-05:002023-12-19T20:02:38.468-05:00Sherlock on knowledgeI consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-27609771686303489022023-12-18T10:55:00.009-05:002023-12-18T10:55:52.811-05:00An explanation of some kind ... is necessary—however absurd—to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems of life. Algernon Blackwood, The Willows Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-22970370102543101082023-11-26T16:08:00.005-05:002023-11-26T16:08:27.040-05:00We think time travels forward, marches on in a straight line, and so we hurry alongside it to keep up. Hurry, hurry, mustn’t fall behind. But it doesn’t, you see. Time just swirls around us. Everything is always present. The things we’ve done, the people we’ve loved, the people we’ve hurt, they’re all still here.... The lie of time. Everything I’ve done and everything I’ve been is present in the Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-59393941512526642582023-10-21T07:33:00.003-04:002023-10-21T07:33:24.315-04:00The Coming Wave[T]he entirety of the human world depends on either living systems or our intelligence. And yet both are now in an unprecedented moment of exponential innovation and upheaval, an unparalleled augmentation that will leave little unchanged. Starting to crash around us is a new wave of technology. This wave is unleashing the power to engineer these two universal foundations: a wave of nothing less Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-60311935189926747452023-10-01T16:12:00.005-04:002023-10-01T16:12:34.392-04:00Truer words ....There is no doubt that being human is incredibly difficult and cannot be mastered in one lifetime.Dead men don’t find things out. Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-57448097775258931152023-09-30T21:10:00.002-04:002023-09-30T21:10:11.859-04:00RulesThat’s why there’s rules, understand? So that you think before you break ’em.Terry Pratchett, Thief of TimeGerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-29153410918750859622023-09-26T18:50:00.004-04:002023-09-26T18:50:32.540-04:00The DarkFor something to exist, it has to have a position in time and space. And this explains why nine-tenths of the mass of the universe is unaccounted for. Nine-tenths of the universe is the knowledge of the position and direction of everything in the other tenth. Every atom has its biography, every star its file, every chemical exchange its equivalent of the inspector with a clipboard. It is Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-66958238039510699352023-08-02T17:07:00.002-04:002023-08-02T17:07:19.540-04:00You cannot make Italians really progressive; they are too intelligent. Men who see the short cut to good living will never go by the new elaborate roads.G.K. Chesterton, in the The Paradise of Thieves (A Father Brown mystery)Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-18443523874507552232023-07-22T14:48:00.005-04:002023-07-22T14:48:42.523-04:00Wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen. G.K. Chesterton, in the The Blue Cross (A Father Brown mystery) as attributed to "Poe."Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-83596754134522856562023-07-09T17:24:00.003-04:002023-07-09T17:24:13.839-04:00Labor is one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.Ambrose Bierce Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-85331195088315818072023-06-28T17:18:00.000-04:002023-06-28T17:18:03.606-04:00I wanted all things to make sense,So we'd be happy instead of tense. From Nice, Nice, Very Nice, Ambrosia Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-7760623025417446872023-06-19T19:58:00.005-04:002023-06-19T19:58:27.994-04:00Man is cruelly wasteful of life when his own safety is endangered and he is sheltered by impunity, and little mercy is to be expected from him when he feels the sting of the reptile and is conscious of the power to destroy.Washington Irving, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-57671138906899590232023-05-07T18:20:00.006-04:002023-05-07T18:20:52.144-04:00È sempre beneIl sospettare un poco in questo mondo. Mozart, Cosi fan tutte Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-74494274132210942622023-04-20T20:58:00.009-04:002023-04-20T20:58:57.043-04:00Washington Irving on American public mindGoverned, as we are, entirely by public opinion, the utmost care should be taken to preserve the purity of the public mind. Knowledge is power, and truth is knowledge; whoever, therefore, knowingly propagates a prejudice, willfully saps the foundation of his country’s strength. Washington Irving, The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey CrayonGerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-6926672239593924492023-03-27T13:35:00.004-04:002023-03-27T13:35:59.016-04:00I resist what I cannot changeOwn it in your own wayI wanna find what can't be foundPain, The War on DrugsGerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-28023282219100504732023-02-23T17:42:00.006-05:002023-02-23T17:42:18.754-05:00Every act has consequences that change that world in some way, no matter how modest, and those actions will go on changing the world for millennia after we are gone. But to remember the details of every action is to invite madness, to paralyze our brains and our communities with memory.Gavin Francis, The Dream of Forgetfulness (NYRB, March 9, 2023) Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-13718753047955535822023-02-22T11:35:00.001-05:002023-02-22T11:35:05.974-05:00Successful manipulation may be mistaken for intelligence. GMGGerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-48413967022125892022023-02-15T13:51:00.007-05:002023-02-15T13:51:45.648-05:00Here in no alien place he sat....P. D. James, The Private Patient Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-9370896937693243322022-12-26T17:51:00.001-05:002022-12-26T17:51:00.159-05:00He took comfort in knowing that the world would carry on without him-and, in fact, already had.Amor Towles, A Gentleman in MoscowGerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-28254514664590396582022-12-23T17:50:00.000-05:002022-12-23T17:50:01.028-05:00It is a sad but unavoidable fact of life … that as we age our social circles grow smaller. Whether from increased habit or diminished vigor, we suddenly find ourselves in the company of just a few familiar faces. Amor Towles, A Gentleman in MoscowGerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-10862204428484429752022-12-14T19:39:00.002-05:002022-12-14T19:39:21.201-05:00Keynes on MoneyThe main tenet of liberal socialism is that the state should cut the cord between money and time by taking over as much as three quarters of a country’s capital, bringing the frantic activities of saving and investment that plague capitalist societies under public ownership and control. In tandem with low interest rates and prohibitions on individuals’ and firms’ taking their money out of the Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-29080754197265667042022-11-29T16:54:00.001-05:002022-11-29T16:54:00.178-05:00Our history is as much a product of torsion and stress as it is of unilinear drive. It is amusing that at any given point of time we haven't the slightest idea of what is happening to us. The present wars and ideological changes of nervousness and fighting seem to have direction, but in a hundred years it is more than possible it will be seen that the direction was quite different from the one weGerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-62571285458031476452022-11-27T16:54:00.000-05:002022-11-27T16:54:01.262-05:00Ideas are not dangerous unless they find seeding place in some earth more profound than the mind…. dangerous only when planted in unease and disquietude. But being so planted, growing in such earth, it ceases to be idea and becomes emotion and then religion. John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5012198.post-80333560329394390052022-11-22T14:36:00.001-05:002022-11-22T14:36:00.157-05:00A man -- a viewing-point man -- while he will love the abstract good qualities and detest the abstract bad, will nevertheless envy and admire the person who through possessing the bad qualities has succeeded economically and socially, and will hold in contempt that person whose good qualities have caused failure. When such a viewing-point man thinks of Jesus or St. Augustine or Socrates he Gerard Galluccihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15909722623126534873noreply@blogger.com0