The difference between cultured people and uncultured people, in regard to their response to Nature, is that the former make a lot of a little, whereas the latter make little of a lot.
Author: Milovan
Llewelyn Powys on Natural Happiness
The secret to be remembered is that nothing matters, nothing but the momentary consciousness of each individual as he opens his eyes upon as spectacle that knows nought of ethics.
The Wit and Wisdom of Cyril Connolly (Part I)
I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized.
Henry Miller’s Advice to the Young Writer
They never dream—or they behave as if they never realize – that the reason why they feel sterile, frustrated and joyless is because art (and with it the artist) has been ruled out of their lives.
Pliny the Younger on Leisure
No hope, no fear agitates me; no gossip disturbs my mind. Conversation is confined to myself and my books.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Two Literary Teachers
Louis-Ferdinand Céline is considered the second best French novelist after Proust (if not the best). If you felt delighted after reading Journey to the End of the Night (1932), and if you wondered what are…
Cicero on Crafting Your Needs
the true satisfaction to be derived from food comes not from repletion but from appetite – the people who run hardest after pleasure are the least likely to catch what they are after.
54 Ancient Quotes Inscribed in Montaigne’s Tower
“God gave to man the desire for knowledge for the sake of tormenting him.”
Arthur Schopenhauer’s Favorite Novels
A novel will be the higher and nobler the more inner and less outer life depicts… The art lies in setting the inner life into the most violent motion with the smallest possible expenditure of outer life: for it is the inner life which is the real object of our interest. – The task of the novelist is not to narrate great events but to make small ones interesting.