Search results for “james baldwin”
Thoreau on the Long Cycles of Social Change and the Importance of Not Mistaking Politics for Progress
“The longer the lever the less perceptible its motion.”
Salvation by Words: Iris Murdoch on Language as a Vehicle of Truth and Art as a Force of Resistance to Tyranny
“Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify. The good artist is a vehicle of truth.”
The Great Naturalist John Burroughs on Art, the Courage to Defy Convention, and the Measure of a Visionary
“The new man makes room for himself, and if he be of the first order he largely makes the taste by which he is appreciated, and the rules of art by which he is to be judged.”
Favorite Books of 2018
The anatomy of feeling, the science of psychedelics, Ursula K. Le Guin’s final poetry collection, arresting essays by Zadie Smith, Rebecca Solnit, Anne Lamott, and Audre Lorde, a physicist’s lyrical meditation on science and spirituality, and more.
Against Common Sense: Vladimir Nabokov on the Wellspring of Wonder and Why the Belief in Goodness Is a Moral Obligation
“This capacity to wonder at trifles — no matter the imminent peril — these asides of the spirit, these footnotes in the volume of life are the highest forms of consciousness, and it is in this childishly speculative state of mind, so different from commonsense and its logic, that we know the world to be good.”
Romanian Philosopher Emil Cioran on the Courage to Disillusion Yourself
“The man who unmasks his fictions renounces his own resources and, in a sense, himself. Consequently, he will accept other fictions which will deny him, since they will not have cropped up from his own depths.”
Anatomy of Deception and Self-Delusion: Walter Lippmann on Public Opinion, Our Slippery Grasp of Truth, and the Discipline of Apprehending Reality Clearly
“If the connection between reality and human response were direct and immediate, rather than indirect and inferred, indecision and failure would be unknown.”
How to Rewire Your Broken Behavioral Patterns: Shakespeare’s Advice on Acquiring Better Habits
“Assume a virtue, if you have it not.”
Hermann Hesse on Hope, the Difficult Art of Taking Responsibility, and the Wisdom of the Inner Voice
“If you are now wondering where to look for consolation, where to seek a new and better God… he does not come to us from books, he lives within us… This God is in you too. He is most particularly in you, the dejected and despairing.”
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