Texts and Archives

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Thursday, July 30, 2026

Pray Eternity May Be As Sweet

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Joseph Ernest Renan, Brother & Sister: A Memoir and the Letters of Ernest and Henriette Renan , tr. Lady Mary Loyd (London: William Hein...

Life Of Study & Thought

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Joseph Ernest Renan, The Future of Science: Ideas of 1848 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1891), xxi (emphasis mine; written to Monsieur Eugène B...
Sunday, July 26, 2026

Revering The Dreams Of Early Youth

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Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos , tr. R. D. Boylan (in The Works of Friedrick Schiller , vol. III., London, 1872), 159 (the Marquis to the Qu...
Wednesday, July 22, 2026

Giving of Oneself

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Johan Huizinga, ‘‘Historical Ideals of Life (1915),’’ in The Course of Civilizations , tr. James S. Holmes & Hans van Marie (Providence:...

An Open Hand

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Maria von Wedemeyer to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pätzig, 8 October 1943 (in Love Letters from Cell 92 , tr. John Brownjohn (Nashville: Abingdon P...
Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Sad Lucidity Of Soul

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Emery Neff, The Poetry of History: The Contribution of Literature and Literary Scholarship To the Writing of History since Voltaire (New Yo...
Friday, July 10, 2026

Gazing Irreverently, & Praising Instead Of Praying

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Emery Neff, The Poetry of History: The Contribution of Literature and Literary Scholarship To the Writing of History since Voltaire  (New Yo...
Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Divine Souls

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Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Al-Maṭālib al-ʿĀliya min al-ʿIlm al-Ilāhī , ed. Aḥmad Ḥijāzī al-Saqqā, vol. 1 (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1987), ...
Wednesday, July 1, 2026

The Unhappiness, Faults, & Follies Of Literary Men, & The History Of Genius

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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), 51-5...
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....