Memento mori is Latin for remember that you must die. A scary thought at first – contemplating the inevitability of death can make you desperate, frustrated and anxious. To be Stoic is to accept things…
Hermann Hesse on Knowledge and Wisdom in Two Powerful Quotes from Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse should be on any soul-searcher’s reading list. Hesse’s novels, each exploring one’s authenticity and path to self knowledge, help you question, understand and appreciate the uniqueness of everyone’s path in life. All across…
Ten Cat Philosophy Hints from John Gray On How To Live a Happy Life
John Gray’s latest book Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life is just out. Bellow is Gray’s summary of ten cat lessons on how to live well. 1. Never try to persuade human beings…
Art as The Criticism of Life
Life is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error.
G. K. Chesterton on The Fallacy Of Success
They do not teach people to be successful, but they do teach people to be snobbish; they do spread a sort of evil poetry of worldliness.
José Ortega y Gasset – Barbarism of Specialization [Revolt of the Masses chapter summary]
In his 1930 book The Revolt of the Masses (Spanish: La rebelión de las masas) José Ortega y Gasset deals with the rise of mass-man and the question of how around the turn of the…
Italo Calvino: (A Possible) Categorization of Books
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.