Personal/philosophy nodes:
- How will you know you didn't get it all wrong?
- A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
- Lolita Nation
Physics/mathematics nodes:
Nodes about literary criticism:
Critical essays:
- Ein Deutsches Requiem
- When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom
"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. ... To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius. ... These are the voices we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. ... It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." -- R. W. Emerson, On Self-Reliance
Gmail: colonelmustard
Thanks E2, for reading what I write. I really do need the exercise in writing muscles, and thankfully, if I'm doing a good enough job, there's people who want to read what I write, so I get instant gratification and feedback. Real exercise can't beat that.