Knowledge is a pile of bricks, and understanding is a way of building.
Theodore Sturgeon
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 grace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grace. Show all posts
Friday, July 10, 2020
Friday, February 28, 2020
He who knows not what the Universe is knows not what is his place therein. He who knows not for what end it was created, knows not himself and knows not the world. He who is deficient in either of these parts of knowledge cannot even say for what end he himself was created.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (VIII,52)
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (VIII,52)
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Sunday, August 25, 2019
While sitting at the fireside in the winter, at ease on soft couches, well fed, sipping tasty wine and nibbling tidbits, it is then that a host may duly inquire of his guest: Who are you among men, and whence do you come?
Xenophanes, (per Philip Wheelwright, The PreSocratics)
Xenophanes, (per Philip Wheelwright, The PreSocratics)
Friday, March 29, 2019
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
I leave the choice of my arguments to fortune, and take that she first presents to me; they are all alike to me, I never design to go through any of them; for I never see all of anything…. Of a hundred members and faces that everything has, I take one, one while to look it over only, another while to ripple up the skin, and sometimes to pinch it to the bones: I give a stab, not so wide but as deep as I can, and am for the most part tempted to take it in hand by some new light I discover in it.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Sunday, October 22, 2017
We are, as we have always been, dangerous creatures, the enemies of our
own happiness. But the only help we have ever found for this, the only
melioration, is in mutual reverence. God’s grace comes to us unmerited,
the theologians say. But the grace we could extend to one another we
consider it best to withhold in very many cases, presumptively, or in
the absence of what we consider true or sufficient merit (we being more
particular than God), or because few gracious acts, if they really
deserve the name, would stand up to a cost-benefit analysis. This is not
the consequence of a new atheism, or a systemic materialism that
afflicts our age more than others. It is good old human meanness, which
finds its terms and pretexts in every age. The best argument against
human grandeur is the meagerness of our response to it, paradoxically
enough.
Marilynne Robinson, New York Review (November , 2017)
Marilynne Robinson, New York Review (November , 2017)
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