Showing posts with label doing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label doing. Show all posts

Friday, May 01, 2020

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Man must consider, not only that each day part of his life is spent, and that less and less remains to him, but also that, even if he live longer, it is very uncertain whether his intelligence will suffice as heretofore for the understanding of his affairs, and for grasping that knowledge which aims at comprehending things human and divine. When dotage begins, breath, nourishment, fancy, impulse, and so forth will not fail him. But self-command, accurate appreciation of duty, power to scrutinize what strikes his senses, or even to decide whether he should take his departure, all powers, indeed, which demand a well-trained understanding, must be extinguished in him. Let him be up and doing then, not only because death comes nearer every day, but because understanding and intelligence often leave us before we die. 

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations  (III,1)

Saturday, September 28, 2019

The internet reminds us on a daily basis that it is not at all rewarding to become aware of problems that you have no reasonable hope of solving.

Jia Tolentino, as quoted in the New York Review by Jonathan Lethem

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

How many brave individual actions are buried in the crowd of a battle? 

Michel de Montaigne

Thursday, October 25, 2018

He who has neither the courage to die nor the heart to live, who will neither resist nor fly, what can we do with him?

Michel de Montaigne

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Anybody any good at what they do, that’s what they are.

William Gibson, Neuromancer

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.

Haruki Murakami, Men Without Women

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?

Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

Saturday, January 09, 2016

Try to do what you do without mockery of our heartbroken little era. To mock is easy.

Anne Carson, 1=1, New Yorker of January 11, 2016

Saturday, July 27, 2013

The whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life.  We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. 

Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up.

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Thursday, January 24, 2013

I'm a treetop flyer,
Born Survivor.

Stephen Stills, Treetop Flyer

Thursday, October 14, 2010

I have sat at home in Bolt-court, all summer, thinking to write the Lives, and a great part of the time only thinking. Several of them, however, are done, and I still think to do the rest....I would have gone to Lichfield if I could have had time, and I might have had the time if I had been active; but I have missed much, and done little.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, August 21, 1780 is Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson