Alex Young > Recent Status Updates

Well I finally got through my backlog of book ratings from this year. Apologies for clogging your feeds.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I won’t actually be getting around to going back and reviewing all the books I’ve read this year. To mentally move on from this goal that is no longer serving me, I’ll just go ahead and give everything a star rating and call it a day. Preemptive apologies for flooding your feed.

“The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country. These manly sentiments, in private life, make good citizens; in public life, the patriot and the hero.“

- James Otis, On The Writs of Assistance, Feb. 1761

“Confucius said, ‘There are three things of which the superior man stands in awe. He stands in awe of the ordinances of Heaven. He stands in awe of great men. He stands in awe of the words of sages. The mean man does not know the ordinances of Heaven, and consequently does not stand in awe of them. He is disrespectful to great men. He makes sport of the words of sages.’”

“Are all the stories they tell about you true?”
“I’m afraid so.”
🔥🔥🔥

I almost couldn’t put the book down during chapters 19-27.

“Alexander needed desperately to become something. To become someone. To matter. Thus it is for all men. We are nothing until we have accomplished something.”

Onward to Gododdin.

“He looked round at the solarium as if he’d never really seen it before. I knew the look well. It was a look more closely kin to fear than people really believe. A fear born of the fact that though we may come back to a place at the end of our journeys, we never really return, for we are not the same person who departed.”