Texts and Archives

▼
Sunday, October 30, 2022

To Live And To Die

›
J. G. Zimmermann, Aphorisms and Reflections , (London, 1800), p. 229: Be fit to live; be ready to die! Never can I peruse these words withou...
2 comments:
Saturday, October 29, 2022

Two Kinds Of Man, And A Third

›
Hesiod, Works and Days 293-297 (tr. Glenn W. Most, Loeb Classical Library, 2006, p. 111): The man who thinks of everything by himself, cons...

Turning Death Into A Weapon

›
William Edward Lecky, History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne , vol. I., (New York: 3rd edt., 1897), ch. II., The Pagan Empi...
Friday, October 28, 2022

Radical Cure

›
Lord Bolingbroke, Reflections Upon Exile : Instead of palliating remedies, let us use the incision knife and the caustic, search the wound t...
Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Finding The Middle Path

›
Lord Bolingbroke, The Occasional Writer, No. II. : Between all extremes there is a certain middle point, which men of genius perceive, and t...
Sunday, October 16, 2022

Silence

›
Says Palladas, in: The   Greek Anthology , IV., tr. W. R. Paton (Loeb Classical Library, 1918), bk. X., §46, p. 27: Silence is men's chi...
Saturday, October 15, 2022

Sincerity's Rarity

›
S. S. Knight,  Human Life , 1910, ch, vii., Love, p. 158: Of all virtues, sincerity is the greatest, yet, broadly speaking, how extremely ra...

The Sweetest Of All Fruits

›
Alfred Biese,  The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times , 1905, ch. II., pp. 32-33: It was no ascetic r...
Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Burthen and Value

›
J. G. Zimmermann, Aphorisms and Reflections , (London, 1800), p. 5: The burthen increases with the value. Those we love, anxiously do we wat...
Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Singular Men

›
Montesquieu, My Thoughts (Mes Pensées) , §52, tr. Henry C. Clark: As soon as a man thinks and has a character, they say: “He’s a singular ma...
Monday, October 10, 2022

Boring People

›
Montesquieu, My Thoughts (Mes Pensées) , §47, tr. Henry C. Clark: BORING. There are quite a few types. Some are so uniform in their conversa...
Thursday, October 6, 2022

What A Book Requires And Of Style

›
William Edward Lecky, in:  A Memoir of the Right Hon. William Edward Hartpole Lecky , Elisabeth Lecky, 1909, ch. II., pp. 48 & 49: A boo...
Wednesday, October 5, 2022

That Life Is No Joke

›
John Stuart Blackie,  The Wisdom of Goethe , 1883, Preface, xi-x: There is nothing fills me with more sorrow occasionally than to see how fo...
Monday, October 3, 2022

Personal Love

›
Predrag Cicovacki, The Analysis of Wonder:   An Introduction to the Philosophy of  Nicolai Hartmann (Bloomsbury, 2014),   pt. 2, ch. 4, Four...

Safety And Sanity

›
Henry David Thoreau, Journal ,   November 18, 1857: The cheaper your amusements, the safer and saner. They who think much of theatres, opera...

Freedom For Its Own Sake

›
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals , 1843, February 8: Democracy with us is charged with being malignant, and I think it aimless, selfish resista...

Not Noticing The Pearls

›
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals , 1843, February 8: We are all chemists who only know our own gold. Men cast pearls about in large companies w...
Friday, September 30, 2022

Too Much Joy

›
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

›
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

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