Texts and Archives

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Tuesday, January 31, 2023

The Unchanging Human Heart

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Emil Ludwig, Gifts of Life: A Retrospect , (Little, Brown, and Company, 1931) edt. Ethel Colburn Mayne, Preface, v.: The lesson of all memoi...
Sunday, January 29, 2023

Limits Of Language Before Nature And Before Geniuses

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William White,  Life of Emanuel Swedenborg , (Philadelphia, 1866), Intro. (writ by B. F. Barrett), pp. 7-8: It is difficult to paint in lang...
Thursday, January 26, 2023

Wisdom And The Prime Of Life

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Philo Alexandrinus, Every Good Man Is Free (Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit), In: vol. IX. of Philo's works, (Loeb Classical Library, 1985)...
Tuesday, January 24, 2023

That Friendship Is indispensable

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Cicero, Lælius   De Amicitia , 23 (tr. William Armistead Falconer): Nay, even if anyone were of a nature so savage and fierce as to shun and...
Monday, January 23, 2023

The New Gospel

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Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human , pt. 1, ch. 2, §107, tr. Helen Zimmern: . . . To recognise all this may be deeply painful, but co...
Friday, January 20, 2023

New Discoveries

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W. Byrd Powell,  The Natural History of the Human Temperaments , (Cincinnati, 1856), Preface, p. vii.: It is well known that all new discove...
Thursday, January 19, 2023

Regarding Our Predecessors

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A. E. Housman, The Confines of Criticism (Cambridge: University Press, 1969), pp. 44-45: I spoke just now of servility shown towards the li...
Friday, January 13, 2023

Regarding Love's Place In Life

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S. S. Knight, Human Life, 1910, ch, vii., Love, pp. 156-8: It is owing to the fact that we cannot enjoy anything to the fullest extent alone...
Wednesday, January 11, 2023

The Judgment of Enlightened Peoples

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Friedrich Nietzsche, Unpublished Fragments From the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra , tr. Paul S. Loeb and David F. Tinsley, Spring 1884, §...
Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Serendipity

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Leo A. Goodman, Notes on the Etymology of Serendipity and Some Related Philological Observations , in:  Modern Language Notes , Vol. 76, No....

The Vulgar

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Friedrich von Schiller, from his Preface to the first edition of The Robbers , 1781: The vulgar—among whom I would not be understood to mean...
Wednesday, January 4, 2023

Hiding The Shameful

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Isocrates, Orations,  To Demonicus, 15-16 (tr. Geroge Norlin): Whatever is shameful to do you must not consider it honourable even to mentio...

Knowing One's Limits

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Nicolas de Chamfort, tr. William G. Hutchison, in: The Cynic's Breviary , 1902: “Are you not ashamed to wish to speak better than you ca...
Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Society, Nature, And Books Of Natural History

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Henry David Thoreau, Journal , 1841, December 31: In society you will not find health, but in nature. You must converse much with the field ...

Two Kinds Of Nakedness

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Philo of Alexandria,  Questions and Answers on Genesis , bk. II., 69 (tr. C. D. Yonge): This is praise of the wise man both in the literal s...
Monday, January 2, 2023

Claimed Pleasures Of Idleness

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George Borrow, Lavengro , chapter XIV: I have heard talk of the pleasures of idleness, yet it is my own firm belief that no one ever yet too...
Sunday, January 1, 2023

That For Love Nothing Is Impossible

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Maximus Tyrius, The Dissertations , tr. Thomas Taylor, vol. I., (London, 1804), Dissertation X., p. 103: For love alone of every thing perta...
Thursday, December 29, 2022

Fallen Angel

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Otto von Bismarck, quoted in: Emil Ludwig, Bismarck; The Story of a Fighter , (Blue Ribbon Books, 1927, reprinted 1934), tr. Eden and Cedar ...

When Gloom Is Incurable

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William Cowper,  The Shrubbery, Written in a Time of Affliction :           O happy shades! to me unblest!             Friendly to peace, bu...
Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Losing The Tragic And Gaining Despair

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Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or , pt. I., tr. Hans Hong and Edna Hong, (Princeton, 1987), The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic i...