Motley heirloom tomatoes. Mary wasn’t sure about the green, so cooking it separately.
Theodore Leavitt, “Marketing Myopia”, Harvard Business Review, July–August, 1960.
Balloon Flower
Barzun, “Trains and the Mind of Man”, Holiday, February 1960
If we fall seven times, we must pray at least seven times.
Alain on "The Cult of the Dead"
In the same way that we do not think as we would like to, and the course of our thoughts depends principally on what we see, hear and touch, it is quite reasonable to give ourselves certain sights, in order to give ourselves the reveries that are attached to them. This is how religious rites have a value. But they are only a means; they are not the end; so we should not visit the dead in the same way that others listen to the Mass or say their rosary. —Alain
Hmm, “should not,” which is to say listening to the Mass is the end, saying the rosary is the end?
Alain’s brevities assume shared knowledge. —George Steiner
Alain’s brevities assume shared knowledge.
“In the république des instituteurs, Emile-Auguste Chartier was sovereign. He signed himself “Alain.” His was, unquestionably, a commanding presence in European moral and intellectual history. His influence permeated French education and significant elements in French politics from 1906, the year of Dreyfus’s rehabilitation, to the late 1940s. Alain’s prose possesses unsurpassed economy and clarity. His stoic integrity held generations of pupils and disciples spellbound. Comparison with Socrates became routine. Alain was “the sage in the city,” the Maître des maîtres. In addition to philosophical and… waisberg.micro.blog
A basket full of books. —quoted by David Mills, “Grim, pessimistic, unsentimental wisdom to live by from the ancients”
To enslave is to reduce to slavery or to make a slave of. To buy or own a slave does not enslave the slave, and the person who does either is not an enslaver.
A notable thing about the parables is that there are many tests, but for each person there is just one test. Find out what your test is.
A couple we know are visiting Athens.
Hate should not be a crime.
Yet this is in thy favour, thou dost abhor the ways of the Nicolations, as I, too, abhor them. —Ronald Knox’s translation of Apocalypse 2:6. Other translations.
In “a woman and her doctor,” “woman” means a woman with child.
“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” —Declaration of Independence
“Endowed by their Creator,” but when? Most probably not after birth, like fairies' gifts or according to the mother’s choice.
Heine died in poverty, deserted by his friends. The sole person to attend his deathbed in his squalid Parisian garret was the composer Berlioz. “I always thought you were an original, Berlioz,” observed the dying man. (The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, ed. Clifton Fadiman)
During the winter of 1894–95 Hamsun visited Paris for the first time. On his return home someone asked him, “At the beginning, didn’t you have trouble with your French?”
“No,” he replied, “but the French did.” (The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, ed. Clifton Fadiman)
Reading and Travelling
"My long pupilship with Jacques Barzun began when I was a sophomore at Columbia College and he was an instructor teaching a course entitled “The Historical Background of English Literature.” We students were asked to read a long series of excerpts from notable authors, together with Trevelyan’s History of England, but the class discussions took an unexpected turn. At the first meeting, as I remember it, Mr. Barzun introduced Byron’s irregular sonnet beginning “She walks in beauty like the night” to illustrate the method of relating a literary work to the historical setting in which it was produced. T... waisberg.micro.blog
Carneades used to say that the sons of princes learned nothing rightly but how to manage horses, since in every other exercise everyone gives way to them and lets them win; but a horse, who is neither a flatterer nor a courtier, will throw the son of a king just as he would the son of a porter. (Essays, Montaigne, tr. Donald Frame)