We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
A 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.)
Showing posts with label discernment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label discernment. Show all posts
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Friday, September 07, 2018
Solitude seems to me to wear the best favor in such as have already employed their most active and flourishing age in the world's service…. We have lived enough for others; let us at least live out the small remnant of life for ourselves; let us now call in our thoughts and intentions to ourselves, and to our own ease and repose…. We must break the knot of our obligations, how strong soever, and hereafter love this or that, but espouse nothing but ourselves: that is to say, let the remainder be our own, but not so joined and so close as not to be forced away without flaying us or tearing out part of our whole. The greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he is his own. 'Tis time to wean ourselves from society when we can no longer add anything to it; he who is not in a condition to lend must forbid himself to borrow. Our forces begin to fail us; let us call them in and concentrate them in and for ourselves. He that can cast off within himself and resolve the offices of friendship and company, let him do it. In this decay of nature which renders him useless, burdensome, and importunate to others, let him take care not to be useless, burdensome, and importunate to himself. Let him soothe and caress himself, and above all things be sure to govern himself with reverence to his reason and conscience to that degree as to be ashamed to make a false step in their presence.... The stoutest and most resolute natures render even their seclusion glorious and exemplary.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
There isn’t anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can’t believe it.
Mark Twain, as quoted in The Consciousness Deniers, Galen Strawson (NYRB, March 13, 2018)
Mark Twain, as quoted in The Consciousness Deniers, Galen Strawson (NYRB, March 13, 2018)
Wednesday, March 07, 2018
Everybody has a plan, till they get punched in the mouth.
Mike Tyson, as quoted by Avishai Margalit in the NYRB.
Mike Tyson, as quoted by Avishai Margalit in the NYRB.
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Monday, September 15, 2014
What we look for does not happen;
what we least expect is fashioned by the gods.
Euripides, Bacchae (as quoted from Robin Robertson in the Sept. 25, 2014 New York Review)
what we least expect is fashioned by the gods.
Euripides, Bacchae (as quoted from Robin Robertson in the Sept. 25, 2014 New York Review)
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Friday, February 14, 2014
Empowering friends, picking your battles, always checking
principle with prudence, never overestimating American capacities, but
never overestimating the enemy’s strength: this is best seen not as a
strategy for all contingencies but as a disposition, a habit of mind, a
temperament.
Michael Ignatieff on George Kennan's approach to US foreign policy, America's Melancholic Hero (The New York Review of Books, March 6, 2014).
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Non coerceri a maximo, sed contineri a minimo divinum est
(“not to be limited by the greatest and yet to be contained in the tiniest—this is the divine”).
Quoted by Pope Francis on the vision of St. Ignatius
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)