Scenes from a Transient World

In another season of expanding darkness I returned to the garden where it all began. So much had changed. Everything was unfamiliar. The...

"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would subm...

"Nature has shown over and over again that the kinds of truth which underlie nature transcend the most powerful minds."

"I never had but one introduction that seemed to me just the thing, and the gentleman was not acquainted with me and there was no nonse...

Luxury is easier to rent than maintain.

This war can make a hero from a man like that And claim the best in nameless piles of dirt.

Death is a friend we meet when we are young, fear when we are grown, and welcome when we are old.

Death has this much to be said for it: You don’t have to get out of bed for it. Wherever you happen to be They bring it to you—free. —Kingsl...

Hayek derived the word "Catallaxy" (Hayek's suggested Greek construction would be rendered καταλλαξία) from the Greek verb kat...

Very few of us realize with conviction the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economic organizati...

"It is the duty of shareholders to periodically suffer losses without complaint"

A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An En...

"What science can there be in a matter in which, as in all practical matters, nothing can be defined and everything depends on innumera...

"I wish they would decide once and for all which gang of hooligans constitutes the government of this country."

"He said that poetry is no more a vocation than good health. What he needed was a job."

"…and so there was an end of that short scene of life, which added no great store to me, only to make more work for repentance."...

"…but I was reserved for further afflictions." Daniel Defoe Moll Flanders

"We owe civilsation to beliefs which in our modern opinion we no longer regard as true, which are not true in the sense of science (sci...

"If justice has been abolished, what is empire but a fancy name for larceny [ grande latrocinium ]?" Augustine quoted in Pelikan,...

You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon...

Happiness is lived. Sorrow gets written down

Perhaps some people prefer security over freedom because then they can blame someone else for their misery.

The grave consumes the conquered and the conqueror.

"Probably as much bad music as good has been composed in the course of human history, but we do not expect courses in music appreciatio...

There are two theological statements I disagree with. The first is that there is nothing divine in the world. The second is that the divine ...

When just a boy, I loved two things Two things appealed to me One was heaven filled with stars The other was the sea. I could find the...

Travel makes you realize just how many people there are in the world who are completely unaware of all the things that trouble you the most.

"Devising a test of literary merit is not actually that hard. Here it is: Would you read the thing again?" Marjorie Garber's...

"he said the great presence that permitted everything and transmuted it in poetry was passion passion was genius and he praised move...

David Hume at 300 | Philosophy Now : "With evolutionary theory at hand, it’s easy to see how logically flimsy the argument from design ...

"'Perhaps,' I thought, while her words still hung in the air between us like a wisp of tobacco smoke - a thought to fade and va...

The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect; the art-nouveau paint was as fresh and bright as ever; the art-nouveau lamp burned onc...

"Here at the age of thirty-nine I began to be old. I felt stiff and weary in the evenings and reluctant to go out of camp; I developed ...

I know that in the great cosmic equation, my grief amounts to nothing. But that does not make it any less mine.

What is a miracle? To look at the familiar, and see the unexpected.

"I became very rich. It used to worry me, and I thought it wrong to have so many beautiful things when others had nothing. Now I realiz...

Culture Speeds Up Human Evolution: Scientific American

New Tool Tracks Culture Through the Centuries via Google Books: Scientific American

"American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers."

"...by definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform goo...

"Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive. Its dynamism has to find a...

"There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wi...

The aristocracy of the intellect is a belief that can only destroy the civilisation that we know. If we are anything, we must be a democracy...

"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simple...

"Yes, to integrate the grandiose cosmic equation. Yes, to unbend the wild, primitive curve and straighten it to a tangent -- an asympto...

Theodore, beloved of God and a contented man, Was reading his slender volume of visible light When, like a dreamer startled from his dre...

Across the transoms The quiet voices of men At work on things they love.

"There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness. Had we been placed on earth by a malign creator for the exclusive ...

"I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings."

One life is fragile. Life itself is not. Life continues deep within the earth and inbetween the stars. *** Thomas Pynchon: a seriously talen...

"There is indeed a force devoted to enticing us into various pleasures that are (or once were) in our genetic interests but do not brin...

"There may have been a time when it was commonly in the interests of political leaders to stoke their people's intolerance and bigo...

"In some respects, Deuteronomy reads like a modern document. Had it been implemented, the reformers' program would have included th...

“Everyone agreed that Clevinger was certain to go far in the academic world. In short, Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intell...

(contra Richard Dawkins in a variation on a popular tune) How can I tell you how I feel when I don't know? Words have no meaning in a...

No timeless treasure wrought bright and cold Truth fades like beauty, more leaf than gold.

דָּרַשׁ "Jewish exegesis would be called midrash , which derives from the verb darash , "to search," "investigate,"...

"I have a friend who has a test for the best science questions. You're sitting around at the observatory, ready to start your obser...

Ambiguity is underrated. It is often more valuable than precision. Nature is an economizer, adapting existing structures in novel ways. Very...

αίρεσης "In a pattern that would be repeated in later secular states, inquisitors sought out dissidents and forced them to abjure their...

"Look to the end, no matter what it is you are considering. Often enough God gives a man a glimpse of happiness, and then utterly ruins...

"Everything is water and the world is full of gods."

"He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, h...

"The scientist is our contemporary saint, when he is not our contemporary devil. Not that there is much difference between the two when...

S' io nacqui a quella nè sordo nè cieco, Proporzionato a chi 'l cor m' arde e fura, Colpa è di chi m' ha destinato al foco I...

Markets are like wives: they tell you what you need to know, but you don't always like what you hear. *** There are many fine and worthw...

One man has many beginnings One of mine is here My parents married at the manse of Centennial ARP. They were not doctrinaire They were in lo...

"There are many gifts that are unique in man; but at the centre of them all, the root from which all knowledge grows, lies the ability ...

This long-haired star ruined men and nations; Drove women mad; deformed children; Filled all the world with perturbations. It was the thick ...

"You were born too late to be acquainted with mules and so comprehend the startling, the even shocking, import of this statement. A mul...

"Man is not the most majestic of the creatures. Long before the mammals even, the dinosaurs were far more splendid. But he has what no ...

"I'm sure you have often noticed how ignorant people beyond thirty or forty are. I don't mean forgetful. That's specious an...

"Nothing is ever forgotten. Nothing is ever lost. It's too valuable."

The wind that makes a dune will take the dune away. A mountain range of sand can't will the sand to stay.

And yet the PLONGEURS, low as they are, also have a kind of pride. It is the pride of the drudge--the man who is equal to no matter what qua...

The wind that makes a dune will blow the dune away.

The thing that would astonish anyone coming for the first time into the service quarters of a hotel would be the fearful noise and disorder ...

The moral is, never be sorry for a waiter. Sometimes when you sit in a restaurant, still stuffing yourself half an hour after closing time, ...

'Me? But I don't know anything about politics.' 'MERDE! Neither do they. Who DOES know anything about politics? It's eas...

It was a saying of his that the rules of chess are the same as the rules of love and war, and that if you can win at one you can win at the ...

"And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is...

After they invented clothing, Adam and Eve must have invented alcohol. Being naked and sober might be a tolerable way to live in a perfect w...

"God is too large to be housed under one roof."

It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty. You have thought so much about poverty--it is the thing you have feared all your ...

24 “Then he who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gatherin...

"A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experi...

It is only in our worst suffering that we best learn how to live.

"--Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspirat...

The people who escaped a great darkness will curse a candle because it is not a sun.

#250 "What does Europe owe the Jews? All sorts of things, good and bad, and above all one that is at the same time among the best and t...

"Christianity is Platonism for the people."

The frog-pool wanted a king. Jove sent them Old King Log. I have been as deaf and blind and wooden as a log. The frog-pool wanted a king. Le...

A man will find the kind of God he needs the most.

#285 "The greatest events and thoughts--the greatest thoughts, however, are the greatest events--are longest in being comprehended: the...

#277 (paraphrased) You have to actually build a house in order to learn everything you have to know before you start.

#146 "He who fights with monsters should take care that he himself does not become a monster. When you stare into the abyss, the abyss ...

#39 "Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of exi...

I envy those who can read a book through once and get it. I have to read a book at least twice, and sometimes more than that, to feel like I...

#32 "During the longest part of human history - so-called prehistorical times - the value or disvalue of an action was derived from its...

Beauty is everywhere a clue to a violent past.

#30. "There are books that have opposite values for soul and health, depending on whether the lower soul, the lower vitality, or the hi...

#3. "Behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, too, there stand valuations or, more clearly, physiological demands for ...

#74 "A man with genius is unbearable if he does not also have at least two other things: gratitude and cleanliness."

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'C...

"Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?"

Parking on Main Street: $1. Admission to the Columbia Museum of Art: $10. Seeing the Nativity by Sandro Botticelli: Priceless. Botticelli di...

What if Emerson got it backward? What if the entertainment of one age really becomes the religion of the next?

"Finally, the Deuteronomists stripped the king of his traditional powers. He was no longer a sacred figure. In an astonishing departure...

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos The sleep of reason produces monsters.

"...to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures..."

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and...

"To the captain he is faithful like a friend and attentive like a son, with the patience of Job, the unselfish devotion of a woman, and...

Comme si cette grande colère m'avait purgé du mal, vidé d'éspoir, devant cette nuit chargée de signes et d'étoiles, je m'ouv...

J’ai secoué la sueur et le soleil. J’ai compris que j’avais détruit l’équilibre du jour, le silence exceptionnel d’une plage où j’avais été ...

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle. And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars. (Italian audio file)

D'ogne malizia, ch'odio in cielo acquista, ingiuria è 'l fine, ed ogne fin cotale o con forza o con frode altrui contrista. Eve...

Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura che la diritta via era smarrita. In the middle of the journey of our lif...

Il n'y a qu'un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux : c'est le suicide. Juger que la vie vaut ou ne vaut pas la peine d'ê...

"My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I suspect that there are m...

"Near by is an interesting ruin -- the meagre remains of an ancient heathen temple -- a place where human sacrifices were offered up in...

"But Admiral, in saying that this was the first stone thrown, and that this precipitated the war, you have overlooked a circumstance wh...

There was a grand time over Buck Fanshaw when he died. He was a representative citizen. He had "killed his man"--not in his own ...

"It could be that the Jesus Christians know is both an illusion and a true face of God. And maybe, for that matter, worshiping a divine...

"And does the reader remember, a few pages back, the calculations, of a quoted correspondent, whereby the ore is to be mined and shippe...

Die Lösung Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu...

"I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson's seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homoeopathic pill,a...

"Unlike the Jews, the Greeks could never stop talking, and as is always the case with such people, their favorite subject was themselve...

"The results of human motivations and heavenly interventions make for preordained results, but preordained only in a way so complicated...

"For me, the historian's principal task should be to raise the dead to life."

"History must be learned in pieces. This is partly because we have only pieces of the past -- shards, ostraca, palimpsets, crumbling co...

"Thus, by the four-month death each year of the goddess of springtime in her descent to the underworld, did winter enter the world. And...

For such a son who would not sacrifice such a daughter!

That's how it always is with these Schilleresque noble hearts; till the last moment every goose is a swan with them, till the last momen...

"But why, if you are so clever, do you lie here like a sack and have nothing to show for it? One time you used to go out, you say, to t...

"And what if I am wrong," he cried suddenly after a moment's thought. "What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in gene...

"Why am I to be pitied, you say? Yes! there's nothing to pity me for! I ought to be crucified, crucified on a cross, not pitied! Cr...