SEPTEMBER TO NOVEMBER READING
I’ve been a bit slow to write about my reading for the three month period ending in November (Reading Plan: September through November 2023); I’m finally getting to that now.
Read moreTO DIE IS TO PASS INTO FICTION
Hilary Mantel:
As soon as we die, we enter into fiction. Just ask two different family members to tell you about someone recently gone and you will see what I mean.
EMERGING MYSTERIES WITH AGING
Aldous Huxley:
… do you feel, as I do, that the older one gets, the more unutterably mysterious, unlikely and totally implausible one’s own life and the universe at large steadily become?
PARTS OF A WHOLE
Marcus Aurelius:
No matter whether the universe is a confusion of atoms or a natural growth, let my first conviction be that I am part of a Whole which is under Nature’s governance; and my second, that a bond of kinship exists between myself and all other similar parts.
STOP WITH THE PROCRASTINATING, ALREADY!
Marcus Aurelius:
Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage.
WITTICISM AS CRITICISM
Charles Hartshorne:
As my first teacher in the subject (Rufus Jones of Haverford College) put it, “Every system has an impasse in it somewhere.