Texts and Archives

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Friday, September 30, 2022

Too Much Joy

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Robinson Jeffers, from The Tower Beyond Tragedy :           Too much joy is a message-bearer of misery.           A little is good; but come...

The Path To Truth

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Friedrich Schiller, Philosophical Letters , Prefatory Remarks, trans. unknown, (George Bell and Sons, 1875), p. 373: Rarely do we arrive at ...
Sunday, September 25, 2022

The Joys We Dote Upon

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John Norris (1657-1711), The Parting , IV.-VI.:           How fading are the Joys we dote upon,           Like Apparitions seen and gone : ...
Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Consolation In Our Sorrows

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Mr. Catcott,  The Story of Hippolytus , bk. XV. from Ovid's Metamorphoses :           How oft (in vain) the Son of Theseus said,        ...

Gathering Knowledge

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José Ortega y Gasset, Notes on the Novel , tr. Helene Weyl: Let everybody look in his own past for the circumstances under which he learned ...
Sunday, September 18, 2022

To Each His Sorrow

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André Chénier,  Elégies XXV , tr. Arthur Symons, in: The Modern Book of French Verse , 1920, pp. 94-5:           Every man has his sorrows; ...

Selene

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Sir Philip Sidney, from Astrophel and Stella :           With how sad steps, O Moon! thou climb'st the skies,           How silently, an...
Saturday, September 17, 2022

Being Driven Out Of One's Centrum

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Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom , tr. Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt, 2006, p. 4...
Friday, September 16, 2022

From Infancy To Manhood

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Johann Gottfried Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit) , tr. T. Churc...
Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Cultivating One's Knowledge

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Isocrates 1.18-19, To Demonicus (Loeb edition, vol. I., tr. George Norlin, p. 15): If you love knowledge, you will be a master of knowledge...
Monday, September 12, 2022

Books: The True Elysian Fields

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Alexander Smith,  Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country (Edinburgh, 1881), ch. XI., Books and Gardens, pp. 246, 248-9: Most me...

Passions And Feelings

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Thomas Hope,  Anastasius; or, Memoirs of a Greek  (2nd edt. in three volumes, London, 1820), vol. III., pp. 103-4: Alas! what am I to believ...
Wednesday, September 7, 2022

World's Vanity

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Francis Quarles (1592 – 1644), The Vanity of the World :           False world, thou ly'st: thou canst not lend                     The ...
Friday, September 2, 2022

Accident As Maker

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Isaac Disræli, Curiosities of Literature , Poets, Philosophers, and Artists, made by Accident: Father Malebranche having completed his studi...

The Quintessential In Romanticism

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Georg Brandes, Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature (New York, 1902), vol. II., The Romantic School in Germany, IV., p. 68: The g...
Wednesday, August 31, 2022

The Awful Risk Of The Modern Man

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Carl Jung, The Practice of Pschotherapy , tr. R. F. C. Hull (Bollingen Series XX., 1954), pt. 2, II., Psychology of the Transference, 8: Pur...
Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Vanity

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Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes 1749 (his own imitation of Juvenal's tenth satire, from which I quoted in the previous post):...
Monday, August 29, 2022

Old Age

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Decimus Junius Juvenalis, Satires , 4.10, tr. G. G. Ramsay: Give me length of days, give me many years. O Jupiter! Such is your one and only...

No-one Is Left Unscathed

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Isaac Disraeli, Curiosities of Literature , Sketches of Criticism: Socrates, considered as the wisest and the most moral of men, Cicero trea...
Sunday, August 28, 2022

The Coming Of The Baroque & The «Too Much» To Italy, Nature, Rome, The Garden, & The Aristocrats

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Jacques Élie Faure, History of Art , vol. III., Renaissance Art , tr. Walter Pach (Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1923), ch. II., Rome and ...