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“What [Adam] Smith took from [David] Hume’s demonstration of the limits of reason, the absurdity of superstition, and the primacy of the passions was not a lesson of Buddhist-Stoical indifference but something more like a sense of Epicurean intensity—if we are living in the material world, then let us make it our material.”
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“Yet however much he read, there were whole categories of books the mature Emerson would not read. He would not read theology or academic controversy. He wanted original accounts, first-hand experience, personal witness. He would read your poem or your novel, but not your opinion of someone else’s poem or novel, let alone your opinion of someone else’s opinion…”
― First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process
― First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process
“Planet earth, which Carl Sagan described as a “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” is an evanescent bloom in an exquisite cosmos that will ultimately be
barren. Motes of dust, nearby or distant, dance on sunbeams for merely a moment.”
― Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe
barren. Motes of dust, nearby or distant, dance on sunbeams for merely a moment.”
― Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe
“He says that when asked if he feels like an old man he replies that he does not, he feels like a young man WITH SOMETHING THE MATTER WITH HIM.”
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“The first sentence of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s that reached me still jolts me every time I run into it. “Meek young men,” he wrote in “The American Scholar,” “grow up in libraries believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote those books…”
― First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process
― First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process
Phil’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Phil’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
25 books
|
1,816 friends
783 books
|
69 friends
100 books
|
140 friends
44 books
|
2,021 friends
4 books
|
72 friends
123 books
|
11 friends
2 books
|
44 friends
147 books
|
98 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Phil
Lists liked by Phil
