Quotes from thinkers, old and new, about how the humanities relate to our lives.
Sakharov, Pushkin, and the prison camp
Pushkin brings a desire for spiritual fulfillment between prisoners and their guard.
Times old and new: “objective” creative engagement vs. “subjective” inward regression
"As long as poets express merely their puny subjective impressions, they are not worth the name; but as soon as they know how to appropriate and express the world, they are poets. For then they [...]
Society’s True Aristocrats
Every society is based on aristocracy, because this one, the true one, is demanding with regard to itself, and without this demand every society would die. Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1954
Do scholars hurt the humanities and culture?
We are mistaken when we believe that culture and the humanities are being served by scholarship. The truth is that art and culture do not belong in a university. It cannot be a home for [...]
Joseph Conrad’s Terrorist
The stoicism of his thought could not be disturbed by this or any other failure. Next time, or the time after next, a telling stroke would be delivered – something really startling – a blow [...]
The Oak
The angry north wind proved its strength one stormy night on a noble oak tree. Now it stood racked, and a great many lower branches lay shattered under it. A fox, which had its hollow nearby, [...]
The Temple of Daily Fame
Journalists have erected for themselves a small wooden chapel that they call the Temple of Fame, in which they continuously affix and remove portraits, making such a racket that one cannot hear oneself speak. Georg Christoph [...]
Language and the sciences
How language lends itself to the sciences.
The peasant and the vine
Seeing how useful the vine was, the peasant supported it at a height with many props. Then, once he had harvested its grapes, he raised the stakes and let it fall, building a fire with [...]
Love and moral progress
If genuine love for a young man or for a woman does not seek witnesses, but reaps its harvest of pleasure even if it fulfills its desires in secret, then it is even more likely [...]