I don't know if this is an indication of my limited social engagements or a shift in my interests, but over the last few years, I've spent a fair amount of time filling up spiral notebooks with summaries of articles I've read, podcasts I listened to, quotes that caught my eye, new vocabulary words, etc. etc. At the heart of it I think is my frustration with respect to retaining information. For too long, things that resonated with me seemed to exit my consciousness not long after the initial experience, perhaps it's a function of aging, but I do think that my sense of time passing has spurred me to be a bit more serious with respect to my attempted understanding of the things that matter. By putting pen to paper, and subsequently reviewing my scribblings every now and then, I have improved my recall and I think I've been able to assemble these disparate items into something approaching a coherent narrative and understanding. I've been especially excited by reading quotes from many great, and not-so-great thinkers. I'll share some with you now, and in future posts.
These came from Twain, Goethe, Mencken, and surely some others. So much wisdom in so few words!
You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
I am suspicious of all things the average person believes.
Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.
Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.
The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.
The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
I call architecture frozen music.
Few people have the imagination for reality.
The coward only threatens when he is safe.
Nothing is worth more than this day.
Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.
The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats who can do nothing for him.
A person hears only what they understand.
Wisdom is found only in truth.
One cannot develop taste from what is average, but only from the very best.
A useless life is an early death.
The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.
I provided more than I thought, hope you aren't snoozing.
Peter T.
