Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Meandering freely . . .

Today is the birthday of Jacques Martin Barzun (born November 30, 1907), historian of ideas and culture.

"Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition."
- Jacques Barzun

"The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it."
- Jacques Barzun

"The age of ready reference is one in which knowledge inevitably declines into information. The master of so much packaged stuff has less need to grasp context or meaning than his forbears: he can always look it up."
- Jacques Barzun

"Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race."
- Jacques Barzun

"You never step in the same river of thought twice, because neither you nor it are the same."
- Jacques Barzun

Barzun image source (1)

Monday, November 29, 2010

Meandering we go . . .

Today is the birthday of Madeleine L'Engle (November 29, 1918 – September 6, 2007), author. She is best known for her children's classic, A Wrinkle In Time.

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
- Madeleine L'Engle

"We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes."
- Madeleine L'Engle

"A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe."
- Madeleine L'Engle

"Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth."
- Madeleine L'Engle

"Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist."
- Madeleine L'Engle

"Some things have to be believed to be seen."
- Madeleine L'Engle

L'Engle image source (1)

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Meandering along . . .

Today is the birthday of James Allen (November 28,1864 – 1912), philosophical writer and poet. He is oft referred to as a pioneer of the self help movement and is best known for his self-help classic, As a Man Thinketh.

"The dreamers are the saviours of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them as the realities which it shall one day see and know."
- James Allen

"Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all, heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built."
- James Allen

"Our life is what our thoughts make it. A man will find that as he alters his thoughts toward things and other people, things and other people will alter towards him."
- James Allen

"You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you."
- James Allen

"For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?"
- James Allen

"A man is literally what he thinks."
- James Allen

Allen image source (1)

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Meander with me . . .

Today is the birthday of Charles Austin Beard (November 27, 1874 – September 1, 1948), historian.

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."
- Charles A. Beard

"The lessons of history? There are four: The bee fertilizes the flower it robs; whom the gods would destroy they first make mad with power; the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small; when it is dark enough, you can see the stars."
- Charles A. Beard

"I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amid the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail."
- Charles A. Beard

Beard image source (1)

Friday, November 26, 2010

Meandering here and there . . .

Today is the birthday of Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964), mathematician. He is best known for his theory of cybernetics - the comparative study of control and communication in humans and machines.

"Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions."
- Norbert Wiener

"The nervous system and the automatic machine are fundamentally alike in that they are devices, which make decisions on the basis of decisions they made in the past."
- Norbert Wiener

"I have said that science is impossible without faith . . . Inductive logic, the logic of Bacon, is rather something on which we can act than something which we can prove, and to act on it is a supreme assertion of faith . . . Science is a way of life which can only flourish when men are free to have faith."
- Norbert Wiener

"What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead."
- Norbert Wiener

Wiener image source (1)

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Meandering in the stacks . . .

Today is the birthday of Andrew Carnegie (November 25, 1835 – August 11, 1919), industrialist, businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist.

"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do."
- Andrew Carnegie

"“It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it as the founding of a public library”
- Andrew Carnegie

"People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents."
- Andrew Carnegie

"Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community."
- Andrew Carnegie

"No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it."
- Andrew Carnegie

"Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best."
- Andrew Carnegie

"There is little success where there is little laughter."
- Andrew Carnegie

Carnegie image source (1)

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Meandering in motivation . . .

Today is the birthday of Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955), lecturer and author. He is best known for his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People and as the developer of courses in self-improvement. Dale Carnegie loved to teach others how to become successful.

"If you want to be enthusiastic, act enthusiastic."
- Dale Carnegie

"It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about."
- Dale Carnegie

"One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today."
- Dale Carnegie

"The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore."
- Dale Carnegie

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."
- Dale Carnegie

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. "
- Dale Carnegie

"You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind."
- Dale Carnegie

Carnegie image source (1)

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Meandering while we wander . . .

Today is the birthday of Steven Karl Zoltán Brust (born November 23, 1955), fantasy and science fiction author.

"A young man without ambition is an old man waiting to be."
- Steven Brust

"Most people seem to take pleasure in feeling superior to someone. I'm not like that, which pleases me because it makes me feel superior."
- Steven Brust

"The struggle is always worthwhile, if the end be worthwhile and the means honorable; foreknowledge of defeat is not sufficient reason to withdraw from the contest."
- Steven Brust

"It is always man's ideas which drive his actions. This has, at times, resulted in great evil; but as we look around us, we cannot doubt that it has resulted in greater good."
- Steven Brust

"Every once in while, a person will do something obvious and direct that is no more than it appears to be. I think they do it to throw you off."
- Steven Brust

"Always speak politely to an enraged Dragon."
- Steven Brust

Brust image source (1)

Monday, November 22, 2010

Meandering around . . .

Today is the birthday of André Paul Guillaume Gide (November 22, 1869 – February 19, 1951), author. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947.

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."
- André Gide

"It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle."
- André Gide

"Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you."
- André Gide

"There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them."
- André Gide

"It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves."
- André Gide

"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time."
- André Gide

"There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them."
- André Gide

Gide image source (1)

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Meandering in the stacks . . .

Today is the birthday of François-Marie Arouet (November 21, 1694 – May 30, 1778), writer, historian and philosopher. He is best known by the pen name Voltaire.

"Common sense is not so common."
- Voltaire

"Our character is composed of our ideas and our feelings: and, since it has been proved that we give ourselves neither feelings nor ideas, our character does not depend on us. If it did depend on us, there is nobody who would not be perfect. If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing"
- Voltaire

"What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbor's, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all."
- Voltaire

"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."
- Voltaire

"The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood."
- Voltaire

"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers."
- Voltaire

"There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times."
- Voltaire

"Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause."
- Voltaire

"Man is free at the instant he wants to be."
- Voltaire

Voltaire image source (1)

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Meandering . . .

Today is the birthday of Josiah Royce (November 20, 1855 – September 14, 1916), objective idealist philosopher.

"The unique eludes us; yet we remain faithful to the ideal of it; and in spite of sense and of our merely abstract thinking, it becomes for us the most real thing in the actual world, although for us it is the elusive goal of an infinite quest."
- Josiah Royce

"A self is, by its very essence, a being with a past. One must look lengthwise backwards in the stream of time in order to see the self, or its shadow, now moving with the stream, now eddying in the currents from bank to bank of its channel, and now strenuously straining onwards in the pursuit of its chosen good."
- Josiah Royce

"Philosophers have actually devoted themselves, in the main, neither to perceiving the world, nor to spinning webs of conceptual theory, but to interpreting the meaning of the civilizations which they have represented, and to attempting the interpretation of whatever minds in the universe, human or divine, they believed to be real."
- Josiah Royce

"Thinking is like loving and dying - each of us must do it for himself."
- Josiah Royce

"Of this our true individual life, our present life is a glimpse, a fragment, a hint, and in its best moments a visible beginning."
- Josiah Royce

"Interfere with the reality of my world, and you therefore take the very life and heart out of my will."
- Josiah Royce

Royce image source (1)

Friday, November 19, 2010

Meandering we go on and on . . .

Today is the birthday of Wilhelm Dilthey (November 19, 1833 – October 1, 1911), historian, psychologist, sociologist and hermeneutic philosopher.

Wilhelm Dilthey is best known for the way he distinguished between the natural and human sciences.

"The human being knows itself only in history, never through introspection; indeed, we all seek it in history. Or, to put it more generally, we seek what is human in it, such as religion, and so on. We want to know what it is. If there were a science of human beings it would be anthropology that aims at understanding the totality of experience through structural context. The individual always realizes only one of the possibilities in its development, which could always have taken a different turning whenever it has to make an important decision. The human being is only given to us at all in terms of its realized possibilities."
- Wilhelm Dilthey

"Ancient metaphysics underwent many changes at the hands of medieval thinkers who brought it in line with the dominant religious and theological movements of their day."
- Wilhelm Dilthey

"A knowledge of the forces that rule society, of the causes that have produced its upheavals, and of society's resources for promoting healthy progress has become of vital concern to our civilization."
- Wilhelm Dilthey

"All science is experiential; but all experience must be related back to and derives its validity from the conditions and context of consciousness in which it arises, i.e., the totality of our nature."
- Wilhelm Dilthey

"We have to make philosophy itself an object of philosophical concern."
- Wilhelm Dilthey

Dithey image source (1)

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Meander with me . . .

Today is the birthday of Clarence Shepherd Day, Jr. (November 18, 1874 – December 28, 1935), author.

"You can't sweep other people off their feet, if you can't be swept off your own."
- Clarence Day

"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead."
- Clarence Day

"Age should not have its face lifted, but it should rather teach the world to admire wrinkles as the etchings of experience and the firm line of character."
- Clarence Day

"If your parents didn't have any children, there's a good chance that you won't have any."
- Clarence Day

"Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience."
- Clarence Day

"Too many moralists begin with a dislike of reality."
- Clarence Day

Day image source (1)

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Meandering in the box . . .

Today is the birthday of Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner (November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995), physicist and mathematician. He claimed that a quantum measurement requires a conscious observer, without which nothing ever happens in the universe.

He extended the problem of Schrödinger's Cat, by adding a second observer outside the laboratory who is commonly known as Wigner's Friend.

In 1963, Eugene Wigner received a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics with Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen. In addition to his many scientific awards, he received numerous awards for his work for peace.

"Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them."
- Eugene Wigner

"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too."
- Eugene Wigner

"The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve."
- Eugene Wigner

"The simplicities of natural laws arise through the complexities of the language we use for their expression."
- Eugene Wigner

"The optimist regards the future as uncertain."
- Eugene Paul Wigner

Wigner image source (1)

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Meandering here and there . . .

Today is the birthday of José de Sousa Saramago (November 16, 1922 – June 18, 2010), novelist, poet, playwright and journalist.

José Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998.

"Contrary to what most people think, making a decision is one of the easiest decisions in the world, as is more than proved by the fact that we make decision upon decision throughout the day, there, however, we run straight into the heart of the matter, for these decisions always come to us afterward with their particular little problems, or, to make ourselves quite clear, with their rough edges needing to be smoothed, the first of these problems being our capacity for sticking to a decision and the second our willingness to follow it through."
- José Saramago

"As so often happens, the thing left undone tires you most of all, you only feel rested when it has been accomplished."
- José Saramago

"A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction."
- José Saramago

"Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts."
- José Saramago

"Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are."
- José Saramago

"Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered"
- José Saramago

Saramago image source (1)

Monday, November 15, 2010

Meandering along . . .

Today is the birthday of Johann Kaspar Lavater (November 15, 1741 – January 2, 1801), poet, theologian, mystic and physiognomist.

He wrote several books on metaphysics, which were very popular during his lifetime. During the later years of his life the popularity of his work declined and today, he is best known for his work on physiognomy.

"Mistrust the person who finds everything good, and the person who finds everything evil, and mistrust even more the person who is indifferent to everything."
- Johann Kaspar Lavater

"Action, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell character."
- Johann Kaspar Lavater

"Don't speak evil of someone if you don't know for certain, and if you do know ask yourself, why am I telling it?"
- Johann Kaspar Lavater

"Great minds comprehend more in a word, a look, a pressure of the hand than ordinary men in long conversations, or the most elaborate correspondence."
- Johann Kaspar Lavater

"If you wish to appear agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you know already."
- Johann Kaspar Lavater

Lavater image source (1)

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Meandering in the spheres . . .

Today is the birthday of Yiannis Hrysomallis (born November 14, 1954), pianist, keyboardist, and composer. In 1969, at age 14, he broke the Greek National record for the men's 50-meter swimming freestyle.

He is is best known as the New Age musician, Yanni. He is self-taught with perfect pitch. He does not read music, but has developed his own form of musical shorthand for composition.

"Sometimes we get caught up in our troubles and our problems and we let life slip away, but life is precious, all of life, and one must try to take in as much of it as possible."
-Yanni

"I truly believe greatness is in all of us. Don't let anyone talk us out of our truth."
- Yanni

"I don't want problems solved for me. I want the fishing rod, not the fish."
-Yanni

"You need a mind open to possibility, conditioned to love the creative spirit we all have inside ourselves."
- Yanni

"Creativity is an inherent quality of highest order. When we create, we become more than the sum of our parts."
- Yanni

"You have to give up some of the old so that you can make room for the new."
- Yanni

"No matter what happens in life, never lose sight of who you are."
- Yanni

Yanni image source (1)

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Meandering here, there and all around . . .

Today is the birthday of Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (November 13, 1850 – December 3, 1894), novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. He is best known as the author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

"To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Judge each day not by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"A friend is a gift you give yourself."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson image source (1)

Friday, November 12, 2010

Meandering around . . .

Today is the birthday of Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980), literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician.

"A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see."
- Roland Barthes

"There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it."
- Roland Barthes

"Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire."
- Roland Barthes

"The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition … always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning."
- Roland Barthes

Barthes image source (1)

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Meandering in the stacks . . .

Today is the birthday of Thomas Bailey Aldrich (November 11, 1836 – March 19, 1907), poet, novelist, traveler and editor.

"A man is known by the company his mind keeps."
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hourglass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so, would I?"
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings."
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent - that is to triumph over old age."
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation."
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Aldrich image source (1)

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Meandering . . .

Today is the birthday of Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (November 10, 1759 – May 9, 1805), poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright.

“Dare to be wrong and to dream.”
- Friedrich Schiller

"He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times."
- Friedrich Schiller

"Egotism erects its center in itself; love places it out of itself in the axis of the universal whole. Love aims at unity, egotism at solitude. Love is the citizen ruler of a flourishing republic, egotism is a despot in a devastated creation. Egotism sows for gratitude, love for the ungrateful. Love gives, egotism lends; and love does this before the throne of judicial truth, indifferent if for the enjoyment of the following moment, or with the view to a martyr's crown--indifferent whether the reward is in this life or in the next."
- Friedrich Schiller

“He that is overcautious will accomplish little”
- Friedrich Schiller

"It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in."
- Friedrich Schiller

"The rich become richer and the poor become poorer is a cry heard throughout the whole civilized world."
- Friedrich Schiller

"It is often wise to reveal that which cannot be concealed for long."
- Friedrich Schiller

"Keep true to the dreams of your youth."
- Friedrich Schiller

Schiller image source (1)

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Meandering we go on and on . . .

Today is the birthday of Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974), poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967.

"The joy that isn't shared dies young."
- Anne Sexton

"Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard."
- Anne Sexton

"Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth."
- Anne Sexton

"I try to take care and be gentle to them. Words and eggs must be handled with care. Once broken they are impossible things to repair."
- Anne Sexton

Sexton image source (1)

Monday, November 8, 2010

Meandering on the edge . . .

Today is the birthday of Abraham "Bram" Stoker (November 8, 1847 – April 20, 1912), novelist and short story writer. He is best known for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula.

"No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be."
- Bram Stoker

“I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.”
- Bram Stoker

"Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men´s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain."
- Bram Stoker

"There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part."
- Bram Stoker

"How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams."
- Bram Stoker

"There is a reason why all things are as they are."
- Bram Stoker

Stoker stamp image source (1)

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Meandering while we wander . . .

Today is the birthday of Albert Camus ( November 7, 1913 – January 4, 1960), author, philosopher and journalist. He best-known novels are The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947).

Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.

"Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day."
- Albert Camus

"The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. ... the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill."
- Albert Camus

"Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken."
- Albert Camus

"I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it."
- Albert Camus

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."
- Albert Camus

"I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is."
- Albert Camus

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
- Albert Camus

"I rebel; therefore I exist."
- Albert Camus

Camus image source (1)

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Meandering here and there . . .

Today is the birthday of Robert Mathias Musil (November 6, 1880 - April 15, 1942), writer. He is best known for his long unfinished (3 volumes) novel The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), The work has oft been referred to as one of the most important modernist novels.

Here, once again is an author whose books were banned.

"The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian...He's bound to lose perspective."
- Robert Musil

"Only in the most unusual cases is it useful to determine whether a book is good or bad; for it is just as rare for it to be one or the other. It is usually both."
- Robert Musil

"To love something as an artist ... means to be shaken not by its ultimate value or lack of value, but by a side of it that suddenly opens up. Where art has value it shows things that few have seen. It's conquering, not pacifying."
- Robert Musil

" Each person is a graveyard of his thoughts. They are most beautiful for us in the moment of their birth; later we can often sense a deep pain that they leave us indifferent where earlier they enchanted us."
- Robert Musil

"Progress would be wonderful - if only it would stop."
- Robert Musil

Musil image source (1)

Friday, November 5, 2010

Meandering on the path . . .

Today is the birthday of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850–October 30, 1919), author and poet.

"A pat on the back is only a few vertebrae removed from a kick in the pants, but is miles ahead in results."
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Let there be many windows to your soul, that all the glory of the world may beautify it."
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"One ship drives east and other drives west by the same winds that blow. It's the set of the sails and not the gales that determines the way they go."
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Laugh and the world laughs with you, Weep and you weep alone; For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own."
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"You never can tell what your thoughts will do
In bringing you hate or love;
For thoughts are things, and their airy wings
Are swifter than carrier doves.
They follow the law of the universe—
Each thing must create its kind;
And they speed o'er the track to bring you back
Whatever went out from your mind."
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Wilcox image source (1)

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Meandering in thought . . .

Today is the birthday of George Edward Moore (November 4, 1873 – October 24, 1958), philosopher. He best known as G. E. Moore, one of the founders of the analytic tradition in philosophy.

"The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand."
- G. E. Moore

"... the moment we try to fix our attention upon consciousness and to see what, distinctly, it is, it seems to vanish: it seems as if we had before us a mere emptiness. When we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue; the other element is as if it were diaphanous. Yet it can be distinguished if we look attentively enough, and know that there is something to look for."
- G. E. Moore

"All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects."
- G. E. Moore

"A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."
- G. E. Moore

"A great artist is always before his time or behind it."
- G. E. Moore

"It does not matter how badly you paint, just so long as you don't paint badly like other people."
- G. E. Moore

Moore image source (1)

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Meander with me . . .

Today is the birthday of André Georges Malraux (November 3, 1901November 23, 1976), adventurer, novelist, art historian and statesman.

"All art is a revolt against man's fate."
- Andre Malraux

“Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.”
- Andre Malraux

"Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act."
- Andre Malraux

“The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our nothingness”
- Andre Malraux

"The basic problem is that our civilization, which is a civilization of machines, can teach man everything except how to be a man."
- Andre Malraux


"The mind supplies the idea of a nation, but what gives this idea its sentimental force is a community of dreams."
- Andre Malraux

"And when man faces destiny, destiny ends and man comes into his own."
- Andre Malraux

"An art book is a museum without walls."
- Andre Malraux

Malraux image source (1)
Malraux stamp image source (1)

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Meandering . . .

Today is the birthday of Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly (November 2, 1808 – April 23,1889), novelist and short story writer. He is best known for the mysterious tale that examines hidden motivation bordering on evil, but never crossing into the supernatural.

"If writers only dared to dare, a Suetonius or a Tacitus of the Novel could exist, for the Novel is essentially the history of manners, turned into a story and a play, as is History itself often enough. And there is no other difference than this: that the one, the Novel, cloaks its manners under the disguise of invented characters, while the other, History, provides names and addresses. Only, the Novel probes much deeper than history. It has an ideal, and History has none; it is limited by reality. The Novel also holds the stage much longer."
- Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

"Extreme civilization robs crime of its frightful poetry, and prevents the writer from restoring it. That would be too dreadful, say those good souls who want everything to be prettified, even the horrible. In the name of philanthropy, imbecile criminologists reduce the punishment, and inept moralists the crime, and what is more they reduce the crime only in order to reduce the punishment. Yet the crimes of extreme civilization are undoubtedly more atrocious than those of extreme barbarism, by virtue of their refinement, of the corruption they imply and of their superior degree of intellectualism."
- Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

"Fools – in other words most people – imagine that it would be a wonderful achievement to be able to recover our youth; but those who know life are aware how little it would profit us."
- Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

"For what is hell but a heaven reversed? The two words, diabolical and divine, when applied to extremes of enjoyment, express the same thing, that is, sensations that reach the supernatural."
- Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly image source (1)

Monday, November 1, 2010

Meandering around . . .

Today is the birthday of Sholem Asch (November 1, 1880 - July 10, 1957), novelist, dramatist, and essayist.

"It has been said that writing comes more easily if you have something to say."
- Sholem Asch

"Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence."
- Sholem Asch

"Youth has the resilience to absorb disaster and weave it into the pattern of its life, no matter how anguishing the thorn that penetrates its flesh."
- Sholem Asch

"An illness is like a journey into a far country; it sifts all one's experience and removes it to a point so remote that it appears like a vision."
- Sholem Asch

"To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are."
- Sholem Asch

Asch image source (1)