“Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.”
― When Breath Becomes Air
― When Breath Becomes Air
“Years ago, it had occurred to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteristic of the organism is striving.”
― When Breath Becomes Air
― When Breath Becomes Air
“We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped ... We suffer, therefore we think.”
― How Proust Can Change Your Life
― How Proust Can Change Your Life
“The moral? To recognize that our best chance of contentment lies in taking up the wisdom offered to us in coded form through our coughs, allergies, social gaffes, and emotional betrayals, and to avoid the ingratitude of those who blame the peas, the bores, the time, and the weather.”
― How Proust Can Change Your Life
― How Proust Can Change Your Life
“...love is a skill, not just an enthusiasm.”
― The Course of Love
― The Course of Love
Benjamin’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Benjamin’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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