Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections Translated by Elisabeth Stopp; edited with an introduction and notes by Peter Hutchinson; Penguin Books, 1998 I’ve been reading Pierre Hadot’s 2008 book, N’oublie pas de vivre:…
51. Neal looks older, Jewish, very serious and on powerful integrity drive. –Allen Ginsberg, letter to Jack Kerouac 151. In the beginner’s mind there is no thought, “I have attained something.” All self-centered thoughts limit…
I first read the seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time spring through autumn of 1997. A couple of years later, I read the collection of Proust’s essays in On Art &…
Burton Watson, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, Columbia University Press, 1996 Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know…
440. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. — Herman Melville 464. One of the most…
117. Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul. Every effort adds a little…
7. Our monkey-minds are like these agitated monsters that are wanting this and collecting that, always grabbing, grabbing, grabbing. The process of cooling out that agitation takes time, and that’s hard for the agitated mind…
99. There is a notion of “passing it on,” that simple. One to one. Elder to younger perhaps. That “poetry is news,” that the inspiration for any work you do and the work you do…
100. [T]oday it is not nearly enough to be a saint, but we must have the saintliness demanded by the preset moment, a new saintliness, itself also without precedent. –Simone Weil 200. Poets who died with…
40. The principal truth is this: latent in every act of complete reading is the compulsion to write a book in reply. The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in…