Being So Inclined
[Samuel Johnson] said, that for general improvement, a man should read whatever his immediate inclination prompts him to; though, to be sure, if a man has a science to learn, he must regularly and resolutely…
Category: Commonplace book
Welcome the Test
No man can form a just estimate of his own powers by unactive speculation. That fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by…
Favorite Simone Weil Passages
It is perhaps even more useful to contemplate our stupidity than our sin. Method of investigation— as soon as one has arrived at any position, try to find in what sense the contrary is true….
Diligence
Every man has experienced how much of this ardour has been remitted, when a sharp or tedious sickness has set death before his eyes. The extensive influence of greatness, the glitter of wealth, the praises…
Journals and Commonplace Books
It was becoming a habit with [Thoreau] now to work back over his journals and to reread books, to reengage old subjects in the light of new interests, to revise and recopy his own earlier…
Commonplace Book: Rokhl, 2019
Rokhl Kafrissen is a journalist, playwright, attorney, and Jewish world gadfly in New York City.
Forthwith!
All we can know is, what we, who compose humanity, must do, and what not, in order that the kingdom of God may come. That we all know. And every one need but begin to…
Notice What You Notice
Primo Levi: I never stopped recording the world and people around me, so much that I still have an unbelievably detailed image of them. I had an intense wish to understand, I was constantly pervaded…
The Pleasure of Dwelling on Things We Have Read
Zilbadone, noun, Italian. A zibaldone is an Italian vernacular commonplace book. The word means “a heap of things” or “miscellany” in Italian. The earliest such books were kept by Venetian merchants in the fourteenth century,…
Zosima-isms/1
This is the lot that befalls you, mothers, on earth. And do not be comforted, you should not be comforted, do not be comforted, but weep. And there is more joy in heaven over one…