Furnace. The first evening, about 5 o’clock, the pain from the extreme heat, exhaustion, and headaches make me completely lose control of my movements. I can’t lower the furnace damper. A coppersmith jumps up and…
A living example often can have a stronger effect than thousands of theoretical teachings and rules.–Chan Khong Example is more efficacious than precept.–Samuel Johnson
Yet we to whom the shortness of life has given frequent occasions of contemplating mortality, can, without emotion, see generations of men pass away, and are at leisure to establish modes of sorrow, and adjust…
But the fate of learned ambition is a proper subject for every scholar to consider; for who has not had occasion to regret the dissipation of great abilities in a boundless multiplicity of pursuits, to…
[Soviet critics] conceded that much of what [Vasily] Grossman had written was true, but to publish the novel at such a time would be harmful to the state. Marlov or Sartakov suggested that publication might…
Open your heart to the influence of the light which, from time to time, breaks in upon you: when scruples importune you, which you in your lucid moments know to be vain, do not stand…
[Nikolay] Valentinov … recorded his shock at Lenin’s certainty not only that Marx and Engels were absolutely correct, but that no fundamental principle they enunciated, about anything, could ever be changed. “Nothing in Marxism is…
The night before I left, one of the patches containing painkiller came off, and Mev was in a lot of pain. She wet the bed twice, vomited once. For some reason, the alarm on the…
All over the world, we are saturated by a contemporary culture of materialism, instant communications, and electronic luxury. Advertising bombards us with pulsating music, sexual imagery, and the urgent appeal to involve ourselves more and…
I am sorry that I cannot say anything more comforting, for active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with…
“Nothing is more beautiful than Plato; such reading, for those who are able to understand him, can give one happiness even in the most miserable circumstances.” –Simone Weil