Texts and Archives

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Monday, June 29, 2026

Youth Changed Into A Man

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Thomas Carlyle, ‘‘German Literature of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (1831),’’ in Critical and Miscellaneaous Essays (New York: J...
Sunday, June 28, 2026

From Contemplating How Things Should Be To Knowing How They Are

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Thomas Carlyle, The Life of Friedrich Schiller (vol. 5 of the Library Edition of Carlyle’s Collected Works , London: Chapman and Hall), 99-...

Schiller As An Example Of German Character

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Thomas Carlyle, The   Life of Friedrich Schiller (vol. 5 of the Library Edition of Carlyle’s Collected Works , London: Chapman and Hall), 23...

Pleasures Of The Soul

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Plutarch, Symposiacs , bk. V., tr. T. C. (in Plutarch’s Essays And Miscellanies , 1911, vol. III.), 313-314: What is your opinion at present...

Virtue Growing By Use

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Plutarch, Whether  ’ twere Rightly Said, Live Concealed , tr. Charles Whitaker (in  Plutarch’s Essays And Miscellanies , 1911, vol. III.), 7...
Saturday, September 13, 2025

Taste of Heavenly Things

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John Lyly, “Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit [1578],” in  Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit; Euphues & his England (London: George Routledge &...
Monday, May 5, 2025

A Strange Harmonious World

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Hugo Von Hofmannsthal, as quoted in: Egon Schwarz, “Hugo Von Hofmannsthal as a Critic,” Arthur R. Evans (ed.), On Four Modern Humanists  (Pr...
Thursday, May 1, 2025

A Cloud Of Melancholy

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Friedrich Nietzsche,  Thoughts out of Season , tr. Adrian Collins (Edinburgh and London, 1909), pt. II., Schopenhauer as Educator, §III, 122...
Saturday, March 8, 2025

What Cannot Letters Inspire?

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Letters of Abelard and Heloise , tr. John Hughes (London, 1776), II., Heloise to Abelard, 87-88: If a picture, which is but a mute represent...
Thursday, February 20, 2025

Retired To These Deserts And At Peace

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Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645), Desde la Torre (translated as From the Tower by Elwin Wirkala):           Retired to these deserts and at ...
Friday, February 14, 2025

Making Room For Another

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Henry David Thoreau, Journal , Oct. 24, 1837: Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one life is the making room for another....
Thursday, February 6, 2025

So Tiresome A Scene

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David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature , vol. II., pt. III., sect. X. (ed. T. H. Green & T. H. Grose, London: Longmans, 1882, pp. 226-7)...
Monday, January 27, 2025

Silent And Triumphant Love

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Miguel de Unamuno, Essays and Soliloquies , tr. J. E. Crawford Flitch (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925), Don Quixote’s Niece, 110-111: “Take...
Thursday, January 16, 2025

No Man Knows The Other

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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...
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Sunday, December 29, 2024

Let No Man Seek To Make It Easy

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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

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