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"There are, I suppose, times in all lives when concentrated attention to one problem, human, abstract, practical, seems to evoke a more than randomly distributed series of 'fortunate' encounters with related people, books, ideas. This may be a phenomenon related to the apparently concentric scratches on George Eliot's metaphorical mirror, which seem to gather round the candle and self-regarding gaze of the egoist
— Jun 26, 2026 01:29PM
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Jun 26, 2026 01:48PM
"as Van Gogh's brushstrokes gather round his self-watching eyes. It feels, however, like the opposite of egoism, a privileged insight into the order of things, in which all things are to be experienced as parts of a whole. It can feel like a magical assertion of mind over matter, a telekinetic arranging of the contents of a library or at least of one's own track through it. In such moods, blandly or vacantly surveying shelves, even the catalogue, we discover an unsuspected book, or argument, or set of facts wholly relevant to our problem and yet unsought."
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