Classics
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What I’m Reading #6
Foundation and Empire, by Isaac Asimov. I read a lot of Asimov in high-school and college, including some of the Foundation novels, and recently grabbed this one, the 2nd in the classic series about a future “Star Wars”-type existence with the evil Empire groaning under its long dominance over the galaxies (a la Rome), and the…
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What I’m Reading #3
Sun Under Wood, by Robert Hass. Selected poems from the great American poet. I’ve always been drawn to Hass’ natural insights, textual flow, great imagery, etc. Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius (translated by Gregory Hays). Never intended for publication, this incredible “self-help” journal, one of the great journals of all time, provides timeless insights and recommendations…
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What I’m Reading #2
My Life & Love Are One, letters by Vincent Van Gogh, selected and arranged by Susan Polis Schutz and Nancy Hoffman. Incredible collection of heartfelt letters from Vincent to his brother Theo. nonrequired reading, by Wislawa Szymborska. Funny, insightful and eclectic collection of essays – about the big things, and the small – from the…
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Rediscovering Plato
I studied rhetoric at U.C. Berkeley in the 1980s. It was a thrilling intellectual ride and slightly counter-culture decision to study classics and history during those go-go days of Wall Street and Ivan Boesky (he of the “greed is good” mantra) and Michael J. Fox’s yuppie character Alex P. Keaton on the hit T.V. series…
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Meditations on Descartes
We do not stop to question what is real. We interact with the world, the physical reality around us, and never question its authenticity. We interact with people, and ourselves, and never question that they – and us – are real. And yet we don’t really know. It’s fascinating that humans will delve into intricate…
Words to Live By
One evening I saw a red sunset, its rays falling on the trunks and foliage of pines growing among a tumble of rocks, coloring the trunks and foliage with orange fire. It was superb.
— Vincent van Gogh
Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation . . .
— Albert Einstein
Learning is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
— T. H. White
It was as if God had lifted his baton sharply above the endless orchestration of the seas, and the eternal movement had stopped, suspended in the timeless architecture of the absolute.
— Thomas Wolfe
I’m not saying ability doesn’t matter. It certainly helps. But there’s something powerful about realizing that you’ve undersold yourself — that somehow your mind confused lack of effort for inability.
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
— Simone de Beauvoir
Learning is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
— T. H. White
We read to know we are not alone.
— C.S. Lewis
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
— Albert Camus
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
— Simone Weil
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
— Simone de Beauvoir
There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now; And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
— Walt Whitman
Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The process: sitting at your desk, focusing your mind like a laser beam, imagining something out of a blank horizon, creating a story, selecting the right words, one by one, keeping the flow of the narrative on track — requires far more energy, over a long period, than most people ever imagine.
— Haruki Murakami
Man is nothing other than his own project. He exists only to the extent that he realizes himself, therefore he is nothing more than the sum of his actions, nothing more than his life.
— Jean-Paul Sartre
A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe