September 2010
28 posts
3 tags
“Goldman isn’t so much trying to alert the reader (viewer) that the story...”
– Review of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride : S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure: The ‘Good Parts’ Version, Abridged - BrothersJudd.com (via Paragraph Farmer)
August 2010
68 posts
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““Something which will be familiar to anybody who has ever tried to do...”
– Rowan Williams on writing as discovery, via Faith and Theology
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“Since there is no evidence that any language forbids its speakers to think...”
– Guy Deutscher, Does Your Language Shape How You Think?
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“The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this...”
– Oikophobia - Taranto
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“It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in...”
– Paul A.M. Dirac (via scienceisbeauty)
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How to tell if a CEO is lying →
bobulate:
The Economist summarizes a study from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business showing how to tell when a CEO is lying:
Deceptive bosses, it transpires, tend to make more references to general knowledge (“as you know…”), and refer less to shareholder value (perhaps to minimise the risk of a lawsuit, the authors hypothesise). They also use fewer “non-extreme positive emotion words”. That...
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“The besetting sin of a philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral...”
– Nathaniel Hawthorne, Coverdale in The Blithedale Romance
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“Why does every new management theorist seem to want to outdo Chairman Mao in...”
– The Management Myth - Magazine - The Atlantic (thanks MM)
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“Quantum theory is odd, not just because its weird predictions are a source of...”
– Is quantum theory weird enough for the real world? - physics-math - 23 August 2010 - New Scientist
I don’t recall any theologians expressing consternation about quantum. Wonder why.
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“He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name,...”
– TitusOneNine - C.S. Lewis: Footnote to All Prayer
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“Let it be offered as a parting counsel that parties bethink themselves of how...”
– Richard Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric, 1953
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“Information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom.”
– Russell Kirk
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“The biggest challenge in teaching is the interweaving of honest confusion with...”
– An Interview with J. Budziszewski
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“The obsession with current events is relentless. We are made to feel that at any...”
– On Distraction | Alain de Botton (h/t Bobulate)
The old certainties are the victims of an Enlightenment smear job.
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“The whole evil comes from wishing to escape in order not to have to admit...”
– Denis de Rougemont, The Devil’s Share, Pantheon 1944, chapter 50
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“Things are not only what they are; they constantly pass beyond themselves, and...”
– Jacques Maritain, Poetic Experience, part V
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“Will he come, will he speak at last, the ultimate wisdom,
The unalterable truth...”
– Dorothy L. Sayers: “Caspar the Wise, King of Chaldea,” in the prologue to He That Should Come (1938), in Four Sacred Plays, 225-226
Caspar is speaking to his fellow-Magi about what the star will reveal. Very Pascalian.
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“Why does power lead people to flirt with interns and solicit bribes and fudge...”
– Jonah Lehrer: How Power Affects Us - WSJ.com
Read the whole thing.
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“Flowing from and dependent upon the hierarchic order of the discarded image is...”
– Sister Mary J. Beattie, The Humane Medievalist: A Study of C. S. Lewis’ Criticism of Medieval Literature (Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1967). in C S Lewis and “medieval morality” | Grateful to the dead
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“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
– Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, chapter 19
Another version written c. 1897. In Mark Twain’s Notebook (Harper 1935), p 344 reads “you can’t depend on your judgment …”
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“Hard it is, very hard,
To travel up the slow and stony road
To Calvary, to...”
– “The Pope” appeals to Faustus in Dorothy L. Sayers, The Devil to Pay (1939).
in Four Sacred Plays (1959), p. 156
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“And what better ally can you have in war than a profound scientific knowledge...”
– Mephistopheles, in The Devil to Pay by Dorothy L. Sayers (1939). Mephistopheles is speaking in an aside to the Emperor’s chancellor as they watch the sack of Rome.
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It's that time of year...
catalogliving:
Some people have desk calendars that say what day it is, but Gary prefers something more basic.
We are a bit disconnected from the natural world, aren’t we?
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The curse of reason, or beware of confabulation →
bobulate:
Jonah Lehrer reports why thinking too much causes us to focus on variables that don’t matter:
When it comes to judging jam [the focus of the studies], we are all natural experts. We can automatically pick out the products that provide us with the most pleasure.
When researchers added extra analysis to the study, asking participants to explain the why of their jam preference and...
“There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (via nonancense)
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“In their statements, [Primo] Levi and [Christopher] Hitchens imply that a...”
– Damon Linker, “The Most Pressing Question,” The New Republic
I don’t think that the second paragraph is as accurate as the first. “Best” is not the right word. “Core” would be better. Pascal (and countless people since him) was able to hold our greatness...
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“Poetry shows that literature, like light, is both wave and particle.”
– Siobhan Phillips, Are E-books Good for Poetry?
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“I always laugh when somebody says, “don’t be so judgmental.” Being judgmental is...”
– Andy Martin, The Phenomenology of Ugly - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com
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“Truth rarely comes to us through decisive proofs or rock solid evidence. She...”
– R. R. Reno, Mary and the Modern University
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“The modern era favors images of discovery—Columbus finding America, Newton...”
– Mary and the Modern University | R. R. Reno
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Adiaphora: Which Age is the Dark One? →
The former mind, in a word, read vast significance into everything. Nature and politics and animals and sex—these were all exhibitions in their own way of sex—these were all exhibitions in their own way of the way things are. This mind fancied that everything meant everything, and that it all rushed up finally to heaven. We have an idea of royalty, this mind said, which we observe in our...
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“One of the ends of a liberal education is to fit a person for whatever lot may...”
– Russell Kirk, “The Inhumane Businessman”, 1957
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Knowledge of the rules does not exempt one from their application.
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“I had to concede that she does know him better than he knows himself, after...”
– The Last Psychiatrist: Love Means Not Letting The Other Person Be Himself (via timoni)
Interesting. I think there’s more to the private self than this, but the point is valid
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“Purposeful work, the restoration of a sense of duty, and a state and an economy...”
– Russell Kirk, English Letters in the Age of Boredom
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“Every single thing in the cosmos … has been made both for its own sake and...”
– Michael Ward: A Look at Lewis’s Poetry
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“It is our best work that He wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion.”
– George MacDonald in Robert Falconer (via nachtseite)
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“Look at the world through more child-like eyes, however, and the situation is...”
– Steve Talbott, “Science and the Child”
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“[Simone] Weil saw the opportunity for management to conscript the disembodied...”
– Quoted in mills: Management and the Soul (Or: Corporate Life, With or Without Mills)
Read the whole thing.
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““Henry Rackmeyer, you tell us what is important.”
“A shaft of...”
– E. B. White, Stuart Little
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“The three [worship, learning, and action] are one, and we must go all three ways...”
– Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man, 31. (via preciseandtowering)
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“Indeed, this extraordinary fleshly instrument is a rich source of metaphors when...”
– Frederick Turner, The Human Voice, American Arts Quarterly
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“Why did people think there were so many human genes? It’s because they...”
– SPIEGEL Interview with Craig Venter: ‘We Have Learned Nothing from the Genome’ via Adam Keiper. 