Texts and Archives

▼
Thursday, January 16, 2025

No Man Knows The Other

›
Hermann Hesse, In the Mist = Im Nebel , tr. Harry Steinhauer:           Strange, to wander in the mist!           Every bush and stone is lo...
Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Dearest Soul

›
Martin Heidegger's letter to Elfride (his future wife), 13 Dec., 1915 (found in: Martin Heidegger, Letters to his Wife 1915-1970 , tr. R...
Sunday, January 5, 2025

A Silence More Significant Than Any Story

›
Henry David Thoreau, Journal , January 11, 1857: I never chanced to meet with any man so cheering and elevating and encouraging, so infinite...
Friday, January 3, 2025

Philosophy: The Doctrine Of Longing

›
Friedrich von Schlegel, The Philosophy of Life, and Philosophy of Language , tr. A. J. W. Morrison (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1847), lecture II...
Wednesday, January 1, 2025

Something Worth Living For

›
Henry David Thoreau, Journal , March 31, 1852 (emphasis mine): Why the moaning of the storm gives me pleasure. Methinks it is be cause it pu...
Sunday, December 29, 2024

Let No Man Seek To Make It Easy

›
Carl C. Jung, “The Love Problem of a Student,” in Civilization in Transition  (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978, vol. 10 of the C...
Friday, December 27, 2024

Still Ignorant Remain

›
Saʿdī Shīrāzī, The Gulistān; Or, Rose Garden , tr. Edward B. Eastwick (London: 1880, 2nd edt.), ch. VIII., 206:           How much soe’er th...
Wednesday, December 18, 2024

We Were One

›
Heloise to Abelard, in Abelard and Heloise: The Love Letters, A Poetical Rendering , tr. Ella C. Bennett (San Francisco & New York: Paul...
Wednesday, November 13, 2024

With Inner Devotion

›
Novalis, «Christianity or Europe: 1799», in Philosophical, Literary, and Poetic Writings , tr. James D. Reid (Oxford: Oxford University Pres...
Saturday, November 2, 2024

Woman's Oaths

›
Heinrich Heine, Lyrical Interlude (1822-23) = Lyrisches Intermezzo , XIII., tr. Edgar Alfred Bowring:           Swear not at all, but only k...
Monday, October 28, 2024

Grief Not Cured

›
Abraham Cowley, Constantia and Philetus , ll. 317-8:           Hee who acquainteth others with his moane,           Addes to his friend'...
Sunday, October 27, 2024

Nought But Death

›
Abraham Cowley, Constantia and Philetus (written around 1630, when Cowley was only twelve years old), ll. 445-476:          I t rust (deare ...
Thursday, October 24, 2024

The Process Of Projection

›
Carl G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche , tr. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2 nd edt., 1969 = Bollin...
Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Being Transported

›
Roger Scruton, Why Beauty Matters , 2009: Ornaments liberate us from the tyranny of the useful, and satisfy our need for harmony; in a stran...
Monday, October 21, 2024

Silence, Solitude, Grief, Love, & Thought

›
Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Journal Intime , from August 28, 1875 (tr. Mrs. Humphrey Ward): I know that the world, which is only eager to silence ...
Saturday, October 19, 2024

That Nothing Is Forgotten; On Our Thoughts; On One's Journal; & On Virtues & Vices

›
Henry David Thoreau, Journal , entires taken from 1841, Feb. 8: All we have experienced is so much gone within us, and there lies. It is the...
Sunday, October 13, 2024

Goethe On Johann von Zimmermann

›
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Autobiography of Goethe. Truth and Poetry: From my Own Life , tr. John Oxenford, bks. I-XX (London: George B...
Friday, October 11, 2024

On Solitude; Isolating Oneself From Mankind; True Content; Egoism; Truly Great And Healthy Men; Morbidness & Human Weakness; Misanthropy; & Society

›
William Rounseville Alger, The Solitudes of Nature and of Man; or, The Loneliness of Human Life  (Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1867), 122-24, 1...
Sunday, October 6, 2024

The Certainty Of Being Alone

›
Hippolyte Taine, A Tour Through the Pyrenees , tr. J. Safford Fiske (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1875), 149-51: This valley is solitar...
Friday, October 4, 2024

Life's Endless Toil

›
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day is Done (composed in 1844, and pub. in 1845 as an intro. to a compiled volume of lyrics Longfellow himse...