As Jim Rohn once said...............

 

Taxation:  It's the care and feeding of the goose that lays the golden eggs. . . . Some might say the goose eats too much, but we could all lose a little weight and let one appetite not accuse another.

Fifty years ago....................

Waylon Jennings...Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way

 

On uncertainty......................

 

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength.

-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

incrementally..........................

 If you want to effect change in the world, well, there is a whole science around this, but you have to do it incrementally. And our influence is extraordinarily small. Being rich and successful means you get to fly private and you never have to stand in line for stuff. You have earned it. But you don’t get to tell everyone what to do and what to think.

-Jared Dillian

better.........................

 

We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.

-Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony

On humility...................

 

You have to remain humble in the markets, because karma has everyone’s address.

-Jared Dillian

essence.......................

 

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

-Epictetus

randomness..........................

 

     We too easily mistake randomness for skill.  We imagine we see the future when we hardly understand today.  We readily convince ourselves we are in control of our own destinies, when nothing could be further from the truth.

     Recognizing your own ignorance is an advantage.  Most of Wall Street hates this fact.

-Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest

pondering.......................

 

Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.

-Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum

fun with the language.............

 

     This was a leap forward in computing—or it would have been, if not for the moths.  Because vacuum tubes glowed like lightbulbs, they attracted insects, requiring regular "debugging" by their engineers.

-Chris Miller, Chip War

Weight lifted....................

On discomfort...................

 

Most people mistake discomfort as a signal to stop; the great ones see it as evidence they’re on the right track. Excellence is just pain tolerance disguised as genius. The real advantage isn’t talent but cultivating a perverse appreciation for the discomfort others instinctively avoid.

-Farnum Street, from here

character.........................

 

     Although he understood power and knew how to use it, unlike the case with almost every other political leader of his importance, there is no strong evidence that George Washington loved power, either for its own sake or for the prerequisites it brought him.  He was a thoughtful but not a speculative man, and neither is there any serious evidence that he had a strong vision for America, a vision of stately grandeur or of human happiness.  Why then did he accept the most arduous service his nation offered, not once but over and over again?

     Because, the only answer is, of a profound sense of duty that derived from his, Washington's, moral character.

-Joseph Epstein, Essays in Biography, George Washington: An Amateur's View

quality....................

The 4 qualities of a great career:

1.      I enjoy it

2.     I'm good at it

3.     I make good money

4.     I’m around fascinating people

-James Clear, from here

Four horsemen memes, why not.......?

 

                    more fun here

following memes, most likely........

 

                                            more fun here

limited.....................

 

What is not yet known
those limited by bad faith
can never learn.

-Heraclitus, Fragments

obstacle.....................

 

The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today.

-attributed to Seneca

outsourcing........................

 

     There is an endless torrent of media advice.  It is an overwhelming firehose of speculation and opinion.  Most of it can be safely ignored. . . .

     The bigger issue is not the bad advice, but rather, the outsourcing of your thinking to a third party.  You need to do your own thinking.

-Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest

On time and majorities..........

 

Everyone hopes for an immediate solution, but the only solution to social problems comes through time.  We in America always believe we have only to pass a law and everything will be changed. . . . People only obey a law the majority have already decided to obey, and it must be a very large majority.

-Louis L'Amour, Bendigo Shafter

stop right there.....................

 

My only line of thinking right now is the range of outcomes has increased substantially in the past month or so.

-Ben Carlson

Oh no.................................

 

                  Back story here.

About experts................

 

Experts have their role, but when it comes to foretelling the future,  they are as bad as everybody else.  This is true for movies, music, and technology, as well as stocks and the economy.

-Barry Ritholtz, How Not To Invest

practical..............

 

     One aspect of Franklin's genius was the variety of his interest, from science to government to diplomacy to journalism, all of them approached from a very practical rather than theoretical angle. . . .

     Herman Melville would one day write that Franklin was "everything but a poet."  His father, no romantic, in fact preferred it that way, and he put an end to Benjamin's versifying.  "My father discouraged me by ridiculing my performance and telling me verse-makers were generally beggars; so I escaped being a poet, most probably a bad one."

-Walter Isaacson,  Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

fortuitous circumstances...................

 

In the spring of 1946, when Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. resigned as head of the American delegation to the UN, Hermon Dunlap Smith, Stevenson's longtime friend, launched a campaign to secure the post for him.  Since Truman promptly appointed Warren Austin to the job, that effort came too late, but the manner in which it was begin is of some interest.  "The group I was able to approach," Smith wrote in a memoir of his late friend, "was augmented by the fortuitous circumstance of my going east to my twenty-fifth Harvard reunion, where, in t he locker room of the Essex Country Club, I solicited the support of three classmates who represented an incredible combined circulation and influence: Roy Larsen, executive of Time, Life, and Fortune; John Cowles, of the Cowles newspaper family; and Ralph Henderson of Reader's Digest."  This is not what the boys at ward headquarters would call grassroots support.

-Joseph Epstein, Essays in Biography, Adlai Stevenson

genius.......................

Napoleon’s definition of a military genius was quote, the man who can do the average thing when everyone else around him is losing his mind. I’m going to repeat that because it is such a ridiculously good quote. A military genius is the man who can do the average thing when everyone else around him is losing his mind.

It is the exact same in investing to be a good investor over time. You don’t need to make a lot of genius decisions. You just need to be merely average when everyone else is making bad decisions, as many people are.

-Morgan Housel, from this blog post

messy..........................

 

     What I love about Barry's work is that he views investing as a game of emotions and behavior, rather than one driven by intelligence and data.  That's important, because a) it's accurate and b) behavior is messy (if not sloppy), unpredictable, varies from person to person, and—unlike data—doesn't pretend to offer a simple answer.

-Morgan Housel, from his introduction to this book

richer......................

 

The one law that does not change is that everything changes, and the hardship I was bearing today was only a breath away from the pleasures I would have tomorrow, and those pleasures would be all the richer because of the memories of this I was enduring.

-Louis L'Amour, Galloway

No harm.........................

 

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.

-David McCullough

Washington.......................

 

     "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma," Churchill's fine formulation for the complexity of the old Soviet Union applies nicely to Washington, except you might take the entire package—riddle, mystery, enigma—and double wrap it inside a conundrum.  Less talented than other generals, less intelligent than other politicians, not at all well-educated to begin with, parochial in both his background and interests, a man with a strong sense of amour-propre but no complex vision, either political, religious, or economic, here was this man, George Washington, without whom, everyone who has thought at all about it agrees, the experiment in government known as the United States would, as like as not, almost certainly have failed.

-Joseph Epstein, from his Essays in Biography

Life...........................

 

...........................................its ownself.

On the willingness to listen..........

 

Oh no.............................

 

           via

artful..........................

 

Be artful with your knowledge.  We've all known people who knew many things but who never did anything very innovative with their learning.  Heraclitus realized that the key to being more creative is being able to work and play with our knowledge.  Using our knowledge is a lot like cooking.  Getting a satisfying result depends on what things we add together and how we mix them.

-Roger Von Oech, Expect the Unexpected (Or You Won't Find It): A Creativity Tool Based on the Ancient Wisdom of Heraclitus

parenting...........................

 

     My dad and I fished together when I was young, and those are among my most treasured memories of him.  He taught me first to fish with a worm on a bobber, and then to cast a spinning rod.  He was not a fly fisherman, but I wanted to be.  Around the age of twenty-five, I bought myself a rod and reel and began to try to teach myself—a pattern by which, unfortunately, I have learned most of what I've learned in life.  We often speak of a man who's done this successfully as a "self-made man."  The appellation is usually spoken with a sense of admiration, but really it should be said in the same tones we might use of the dearly departed or of a man who recently lost an arm—with sadness and regret.  What the term really means is "an orphaned man who figured how to master some part of life on his own."

-John Eldredge, Fathered by God

On toxic compassion...............

 

 ...................the prioritisation of short-term emotional comfort over everything else.

-Chris Williamson, from here

a balancing act..................

 

Loving others requires knowing how to say “yes.”

Loving yourself requires knowing when to say “no.”

-Mark Manson

Darwinian........................

 

     The rebirth of America's chip industry after Japan's DRAM onslaught was only possible thanks to Andy Grove's paranoia, Jerry Sanders's bare-knuckle brawling, and Jack Simplot's cowboy competitiveness.  Silicon Valley's testosterone and stock option-fueled competition often felt less like the sterile economies described in textbooks and more like a Darwinian struggle for the survival of the fittest.  Many firms died, fortunes were lost, and tens of thousands of employees were laid off.  The companies like Intel and Micron that survived did so less thanks to their engineering skills—though these were important—than their ability to capitalize on technical aptitude to make money in a hypercompetitive, unforgiving industry.

-Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology

enough......................

 

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

-Theodore Roosevelt

extremes................

 

All bad things in life come from extremes.  Too much of this.  Too little of that.

Derek Sivers, How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion

On education..........................

 

What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay, Spiritual Laws

1001 albums......................

 

..........................so much music, so little time.

Checking in...........................

 

.........................................with Bari Weiss:

If there is someone that's skeptical about karma, this turn of events may lead you to believe in it.

In the background.................

     Dire Straits....................Making Movies album

 

Checking in..........................

 

............................with the Daily Stoic:

Focus on the essential. Marcus believed this was the key to being productive and happy. “If you seek tranquility,” he said, “do less.” Not nothing. Less. Do only what’s truly important. Which brings a double satisfaction he said: you get to do fewer things and you get to do those fewer things better. Remember this rule daily. Keep a reminder in a place you’ll often see: focus only on what’s essential.

choices.......................

 

'I don’t have enough time' is not a useful phrase when it comes to anything related to your dream. It’s okay to actively choose to do something or not, but don’t blame time.

-Alexi Pappas, as quoted here

Some say..............................

 

...........................................why not?

thanks Chris

The Great Clarification...................

 With The Great Clarification of what was really going on with lawfare, back-channel understandings between Big Tech and Big Govt, and questionable conduct by the FBI and the CIA, fear of him was replaced by fear of them.

By 2024, Trump’s main opponent was the Establishment, and the billionaire outsider embraced one of the most powerful themes in American political history by declaring, “They’re not after me, they’re after you, and I just happen to be standing in their way.”

-Michael Wade

On the importance..............

 

................of telling our younger selves stories:

I still get emotional reading these scenes. The whole point of the classic adventure novel is that, when the time comes, the protagonist discovers his inner strength; and as the reader, we get to soar with him.

lingered..........................

 

Frost, when especially playful or vulnerable, was liable to conduct himself like an unfinished poem.  He lingered on the strange within the familiar, the penumbra of doubt at the edge of the known.  He let his mind rest in uncertainties such as the space between feeling and impulse, impulse and notice, between motives real and recalled.

-Adam Plunkett, Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost's Poetry

In the background...........................

   

    Dire Straits......................On Every Street album

 

deliberate decisions.................

 

     Holding the global economy hostage to one of the world's most dangerous political disputes might seem like an error of historic proportions.  However, the concentration of advanced chip manufacturing in Taiwan, South Korea, and elsewhere in East Asia isn't an accident.  A series of deliberate decisions by government officials and corporate executives created the far-flung supply chains we rely on today.  Asia's vast pool of cheap labor attracted chipmakers looking for low-cost factory workers. . . . Washington's foreign policy strategists embraced complex semiconductor supply chains as a tool to bind Asia to an American-led world.  Capitalism's inexorable demand for economic efficiency drove a constant push for cost cuts and corporate consolidation.  The steady tempo of technological innovation that underwrote Moore's Law required ever more complex materials, machinery, and processes that could only be supplied or funded via global markets.

-Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology

On being anti-social...........

 

.............................in the best possible way.

artful dodgers.............................

 

People hunger for meaning. The majority of them want to go home at night with the sense that their presence that day made a positive difference.

-Michael Wade, from here

This is known...................

 

.....................................as hitting a home run.

from Chris Lynch's substack.  Well done today my friend, well done.

staggeringly...........................

 

     The global network of companies that annually produces a trillion chips at nanometer scale is a triumph of efficiency.  It's also a staggering vulnerability.

-Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology

Opening paragraphs....................

 

Silicon Valley has lost its way.

     The initial rise of the American software industry was made possible in the first part of the twentieth century by what would seem today to be a radical and fraught partnership between emerging technological companies and the U. S. government.  Silicon Valley's earliest innovations were driven not by technical minds chasing trivial consumer products but by scientists and engineers who aspired to see the most powerful technology of the age deployed to address challenges of industrial and national significance.  Their pursuit of breakthroughs was intended not to satisfy the passing needs of the moment but rather to drive forward a much grander project, channeling the collective purpose and ambition of a nation.  This early dependence of Silicon Valley on the nation-state and indeed the U. S. military has for the most part been forgotten, written out of the region's history as an inconvenient and dissonant fact—one that clashes with the Valley's conception of itself as indebted only to is capacity to innovate.

-Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska, The Technological Republic:  Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West

unlike.........................

 

     Unlike the legions of lawyers who have come to dominate American politics in the modern era, many early American leaders, even if not practitioners of science themselves, were nonetheless remarkably fluent in matters of engineering and technology.

-Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West

unite................................

 

But yield who will to their separation, 

 My object in living is to unite 

 My avocation and my vocation 

 As my two eyes make one in sight. 

 Only where love and need are one, 

 And the work is play for mortal stakes, 

 Is the deed ever really done 

 For Heaven and the future's sakes.

-Robert Frost, as he concludes Two Tramps In Mud Time

pick no locks..........................

 

Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a revelation is, that it is a telling of fortunes. In past oracles of the soul, the understanding seeks to find answers to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from God how long men shall exist, what their hands shall do, and who shall be their company, adding names, and dates, and places. But we must pick no locks. We must check this low curiosity. An answer in words is delusive; it is really no answer to the questions you ask. Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to-morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them. 

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay, The Over-Soul

after..........................

 

Always having what we want may not be the best good fortune.  Health seems sweetest after sickness, food in hunger, goodness in the wake of evil, and at the end of the daylong labor sleep.

-Heraclitus

Trust....................

 

Trust your own instinct.  Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

-attributed to Billy Wilder

Natural Resources..............

 

In speaking of the great resources of this country it should be kept in mind that the greatest of these is not the money in the banks, nor the minerals in the ground, nor the trees in the forest, nor the richness of our soil; but it is the mental attitude, and the imagination, and the pioneering spirit of the men who have mixed experience and education with these raw materials, thereby transferring them into various types of useful service for our own people and for the people of other nations.

-Andrew Carnegie, as quoted here

In the background....................

..............................American Flyer album

 

Life its ownself.....................

 

      I started staying after practice just to work on rebounding.  In many ways, this approach to finding a unique path wasn't just about basketball; it was about life.  It was about understanding that true success doesn't come from following the crowd, but from daring to be different, to see opportunities where others see obstacles.  It was a lesson that would serve me well beyond the court.

-George Raveling, What You're Made For: Powerful Life Lessons from My Career in Sports

on unlocking human doors...............

 

     It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that, beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that, beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power, on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay The Poet

On opinions....................

 

I think opinions should be judged by their influences and effects; and if a man holds none that tend to make him less virtuous or more vicious, it may be concluded that he holds none that are dangerous, which I hope is the case with me.

-Ben Franklin, as culled from here

discipline........................

 

Discipline turns intentions into action.
Discipline means no procrastination.
Discipline means now.
Choose the pain of discipline, not the pain of regret.

An undisciplined moment seems harmless, but they add up to disaster.

Without discipline, the tiny things will be your downfall.

Self-control is always rewarding.

-Derek Sivers, How To Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion

choose............................

 

What use are these people's wits, who let themselves be led by speechmakers, in crowds, without considering how many fools and thieves they are among, and how few choose the good?  The best choose progress towards one thing, a name forever honored by the gods, while others eat their way toward sleep like nameless oxen.

-Heraclitus

Which self........................?

 

...............Become the self you’d be proud to be.

On hurry-up thinking..........

 

................Go slow when all around go crazy.

self.......................

 

Man conquers the world by conquering himself.

-attributed to Zeno of Citium

Accounting.............................

 

     Natural selection, in short, does not anticipate future needs.  But this principle, while explaining so much so well, presents a difficulty.  If the principle is universally true, how did natural selection prepare the mind for civilization before civilization existed?  That is the great mystery of human evolution: how to account for calculus and Mozart.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Brain power.......................

               two hours of Mozart ....................

 

Productivity-debt..................

 

      A done list isn't solely a way to feel better about yourself, though.  When you start to view each day not as a matter of paying off a debt, but as an opportunity to move a small-but-meaningful number of items over to your done list, you'll find yourself making better choices about what to focus on; and you'll make more progress on them, too, since you'll be wasting less energy stressing about all the other tasks you're (inevitably) neglecting.

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

not there yet........................

 

If all your beliefs line up into neat little bundles, you should be highly suspicious.

-Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

In the background......................

           This Is The Moody Blues double album

 

good questions.......................

What conventional wisdom are you relying on in your situation?  What would happen if you forgot the obvious answers that spring to mind and searched for new ones?  What can you overlook or ignore?

-Roger Von Oech, Expect the Unexpected (Or You Won't Find It)

Underneath.........................

 

Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, Nature, governments, ownerships, I swear I perceive other lessons, Underneath all to me is myself, to you yourself.

-Walt Whitman, By Blue Ontario's Shore

great is the responsibility.................

 

The time at which I stand before you is full of interest. The eyes of all nations are fixed on our Republic. The event of the existing crisis will be decisive in the opinion of mankind of the practicability of our federal system of government. Great is the stake placed in our hands; great is the responsibility which must rest upon the people of the United States. Let us realize the importance of the attitude in which we stand before the world. Let us exercise forbearance and firmness. Let us extricate our country from the dangers which surround it and learn wisdom from the lessons they inculcate.

-Andrew Jackson, from his second inaugural address, March 4, 1833

incentives........................

 

Show me the incentives, and I’ll tell you the outcome.

-Charlie Munger

Reminder................................

 The point of delayed gratification is eventual gratification in the future.

-Ben Carlson

Verse........................

 

3.  Darkness is lack of light as sin is lack of love.  It has no unique properties of its own.  It is an example of the "scarcity" belief, from which only error can proceed.  Truth is always abundant.  Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no needs of any kind.  The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you; or rather, to restore it to your awareness.  You were given everything when you were created, just as everyone was.

-The Course in Miracles, Chapter 1, Section IV

Verse......................

 

The softest of all things
overrides the hardest of all things.
That without substance enters where there is no space.
Hence I know the value of nonaction.

Teaching without words,
performing without actions—
few in the world can grasp it—
that is the master's way.
Rare indeed are those
who obtain the bounty of this world.

-Tao Te Ching, as channeled by Wayne Dyer

Verse...........................

 

     By virtue of the divine consciousness of his previous life, he automatically becomes attracted to yogic principles—even without seeking them.  Such an inquisitive transcendentalist, striving for yoga, stands always above the ritualistic principles of the scriptures.

-Bhagavad-gita, Chapter 6, Text 44

Verse...........................

 

4.  Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!

5.  Let your forbearing spirit be known to all men.  The Lord is near.

6.  Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

7.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

8.  Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything is worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.

-The Holy Bible, Philippians 4, The Open Bible version

learning..................

 

Can I get an Amen..........................?

 

                 via

The daffodils................................

 

.................................seem happy:

A good day......................

 

............................to plant five flats of pansies:

Abundance liberalism, or, learning how to build...

 

But what frustrates me most is that by insisting on degrowth over abundance, progressives are hurting themselves much more than they’re hurting any billionaires, oligarchs, or conservatives.

-Noah Smith, from this blog post

Checking in.......................

 

............................with the busy people:

I love scrolling and can do it for hours. In fact, I often do it for hours. Television is too demanding. I’m a busy person.

The long and........................

 

................................................short of it all.

Fifty years ago......................

The Eagles.........the One of These Nights album

 

some books.......................

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. 

-Francis Bacon, from his essay, "Of Studies"

the quiet moments....................

 

    Why me?

    Why was I spared when so many others weren't?

    Why was I gifted with this extra time?

    And what do I do with this gift?

    This kind of introspection isn't merely a luxury of age, it's a necessity, a way to reconcile the randomness of existence with the purpose I sought.  I realized that the answers weren't in the grand events, but in the quiet moments, in the decisions made when no one was watching, in the way I chose to face each new day.

-George Raveling, What You're Made For: Powerful Life Lessons from My Career in Sports

the vital yet messy questions.........

 

The prevailing ethical framework of the [Silicon] Valley, a techno-utopian view that technology would solve all of humanity's problems, has devolved into a narrow and thin utilitarian approach, one that casts individuals as mere atoms in a system to be managed and contained.  The vital yet messy questions of what constitutes a good life, which collective endeavor society should pursue, and what a shared and national identity can make possible have been set aside as the anachronisms of another age.

-Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska,  The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West

Aging like a fine wine.............

 

Good habits when you’re young are like a bizarre form of time travel. You’re sending little care packages to your future self.
Truth is, no one wants to hear about good habits. They’re not sexy. They’re not even moderately attractive in that “I know you’re bad for me, but I’m drawn to you anyway” kind of way.
-Eric Barker, from this post on aging well

allergic.........................

 

Born and bred a member of the leather-aproned class, Franklin was, at least for most of his life, more comfortable with artisans and thinkers than with the established elite, and he was allergic to the pomp and perks of hereditary aristocracy.  Throughout his life he would refer to himself as "B. Franklin, printer."

     From these attitudes sprang what may be Franklin's most important vision: an American national identity based on the virtue and values of its middle class.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

The Bee..................................

 

........................ouch, that one must hurt.

never ceased..............

 

But the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore the double meaning, or, shall I say, the quadruple, or the centuple, or much more manifold meaning, of every sensuous fact: Orpheus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture and poetry.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay, The Poet

some quotes...............

 

Orpheus was one of the handful of Greek heroes to visit the underworld and return; his music and song had power even over Hades.
-Wikipedia

Many fires burn below the surface.
-Empedocles

Time is a game played beautifully by children.
 -Heraclitus

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
-Plato

As Cæsar was at supper the discourse was of death, —which sort was the best. "That," said he, "which is unexpected."
-Plutarch

Love and the gracious heart are a single thing...

one can no more be without the other

than the reasoning mind without its reason.

-Dante

A life of kindness is the primary meaning of divine worship.

-Swedenborg

Opening paragraphs................

 

     His arrival in Philadelphia is one of the most famous scenes in autobiographical history: the bedraggled 17-year-old runaway, cheeky yet with a pretense of humility, straggling off the boat and buying three puffy rolls as he wanders up Market Street.  But wait a minute.  There's something more.  Peel back a layer and we can see him as a 65-year-old wry observer, sitting in an English country house, writing this scene, pretending it's part of a letter to his son, an illegitimate son who has become a royal governor with aristocratic pretensions and needs to be reminded of his humble roots.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life