I REALLY BELIEVE THAT BROTHERHOOD IS WHAT MAKES A MAN/WOMAN HUMAN. SAUL BELLOW
“THE INITIATION INTO WISDOM — if it is to be lasting — is not suddenly given by any master, it is slowly grown by the experiences & reflection of life. Thought is gradually converted into habit & habit is gradually merged into high character. The philosophic attitude, if it is to be genuine, will pass into the student’s nerves and move his muscles.” PAUL BRUTON
THE SMART WAY TO KEEP PEOPLE PASSIVE and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. NOAM CHOMSKY
MARCUS AURELIUS: HE who has a vehement desire for posthumous fame does not consider that every one of those who remember him will himself also die very soon: then again also they who have succeeded them, until the whole remembrance shall have been extinguished as it is transmitted through men who foolishly admire and perish. But suppose that those who will remember are even immortal and that the remembrance will be immortal, what then is this to thee? And I say not what it is to the dead but what it is to the living? What is praise except indeed so far as it has a certain utility?
JOSEPH EPSTEIN 1937—“FABULOUS SMALL JEWS””A LITERARY EDUCATION”
I MYSELF THINK ANTI-SEMITISM IS ABOUT ENVY.
OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS ONLY ENVY IS NO FUN AT ALL.
WE USE BOOKS LIKE MIRRORS, GAZING INTO THEM ONLY TO DISCOVER OURSELVES.
CULTURE means, I think, that you have widened your experience enough through reading & through being a little bit thoughtful about these things that it has changed your outlook in some ways. And not necessarily made you a better human being but made you see things.
WHAT distinguishes us one from another is our dreams and what we do to make them come about.
COURAGE is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third.
IN RECOMPENSE envy may be the subtlest — perhaps I should say the most insidious — of the seven deadly sins.
THE BEST JOKE-TELLERS are those who have the patience to wait for conversation to come around to the point where the jokes in their repertoire have application.
NO NOSTALGIA runs deeper than that for something one has never known and now cannot obtain.
WE DO NOT CHOOSE to be born. We do not choose our parents or the country our birth. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within the realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
NO ONE HAS EVER DEFINED WHAT A FRIEND IS.
GENERALIZATION, ESPECIALLY RISKY GENERALIZATION, is one of the chief methods by which knowledge proceeds . . .Safe generalizations are usually rather boring. Delete that “usually rather.” Safe generalizations are quite boring.