In the opening pages of his book If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler Italo Calvino drops a really interesting (and possible) categorization of books. I am still digesting how I would fit certain books…
The Value of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
“That’s a philosophical question!” – have you ever received such a response when questioning underlying reasons of some practical matters? Such a question will often be dismissed as impractical, unhelpful or completely unrelated to the…
Giacomo Leopardi on Wickedness of Human Condition
What I do is in no sense done for your enjoyment or benefit, as you seem to think. Finally, if I by chance exterminated your species, I should not know it.
7 Great Books About Flaneurs and the Art of Flaneuring
Strolling is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live.
Elias Canetti On Owning More Books Than You Can Read
And that is, I believe, a part of defiance against death. I don’t want to know which from those books will remain unread. That will remain uncertain until the very last moment.
Henry Miller On Writing
I had to grow foul with knowledge, realize the futility of everything, smash everything, grow desperate, then humble, then sponge myself off the slate, as it were, in order to recover my authenticity. I had to arrive at the brink and then take a leap in the dark.
Friedrich Nietzsche on The Difference Between a Scientist and a Philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche dedicated his book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (1873) to an extremely important part in the history of philosophy: philosophy before Socrates. In a chapter dedicated to Thales, he offers a…
Max Frisch’s Questionnaire
I just started browsing the diaries (or the Sketchbook 1966-1971) by Swiss writer and architect Max Frisch. And the opening chapter is called “Questionnaire”. As in his diary Frisch was preoccupied by the questions of…
Lawrence Durrell’s Praise for Tropic of Cancer
Where all the other people like Joyce and Lewis got stuck in the morass and dirt of modern life, Miller conies out on the other side with a grin, whole, hard and undamaged.