Two Kinds of People
Go back to Socrates: “Know thyself.” For Socrates, there are only two kinds of people: the wise, who know they are fools; and fools, who think they are wise. Similarly, for Christ and all the…
Tag: Socrates
Experience and Expectation
Let me also recall Samuel Johnson, whose famous biography by his devotee Boswell is, I think, something along with the Bible that you should read a bit every day, if only for the delight of…
Ecclesiastes
Compared with the neat little nostrums of comfort-mongering minds who cross our t’s and dot our i’s, Ecclesiastes is as great, as deep, and as terrifying as the ocean. If this philosopher were alive today…
Today’s One-Liner (#139)
Salvador de Madariaga once said that our culture should give to each man and woman, when each reaches the age of voting, a sturdy, elegant book containing an account of the death of Socrates and…
Know Thyself
Success in every order is always attained on the same conditions: to reflect at the start, to begin at the beginning, to proceed methodically, to advance slowly, to give out all one’s strength. But the…
Appreciating Jack Appreciating
Jack Kerouac, Selected Letters: 1940-1956, v. 1 As I’m convinced of the the utility of “pulling”* from my reading, I found the following gems in some of Kerouac’s letters up till he had to deal…
Harvard Joke about Jesus
“A fine teacher, but didn’t publish.” –Quoted by George Steiner, in Lessons of the Masters, p. 33. Steiner observes, “A cardinal definition of genius points, I believe, to the capacity to originate myths, to devise…
Don’t Be Swayed by External Circumstances
The great remedy which heaven has put in our hands is patience, by which, though we cannot lessen the torments of the body, we can in a great measure preserve the peace of the mind,…
A Letter from 2005
April 6, 2005 Dear Andrew, I recently finished a small book by Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, and it made me think of many conversations we’ve had over the past couple of years. So…
Wartime during Life/1
What Catches Our Attention (And What Doesn’t) Reshma observed About a group of doctors she works with “They talk all about Lady Gaga But nothing about the wars we’re in” For Robert To Whom It…