: “The oddest feature of the 1552 rite is the disappearance of the corpse from it . . . At the moment …
: “When we dote upon the Perfections and Beauties of some one Creature: we do not love that too much, …
: Janus-like conscience “Despite their respective compromises, Cranmer and Gardiner were now propelled into new and mutually …
: a world of handsome demons Nabokov, The Gift
: rousseauian, but true “That’s called good training,” Tenumah said. “What you’re hearing is a human successfully smoothed …
: 📖 finished reading: Madame Bovary Not an easy book to rate on a five-star scale. Critics describe Madame Bovary as a perfect book, in …
: “Over the years [Elizabeth I] had sat ensconced in a web of poetry and romance, but money had always …
: novelty ≠ practicality Si, Hashimoto, and Yang: To test whether AI-generated ideas lead to better research outcomes, we …
: life of chuck: meditations In Life of Chuck, Mike Flanagan makes solipsism about as tender and poignant as possible. It’s …
: samuel pickwick and bilbo baggins The Pickwick Papers is a peculiar read. You come to the end and realize that the book you started …
: two Herbert personifications Death: “Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing, Nothing but bones, The sad effect …
: reading Boethius for the first time Okay, Boethius. This is all very well. Often, our suffering is irrational, and we need to be argued …
: “A working landscape was transformed into a national park, in just one of the curious epiphenomena …
: “All that is constant about the California of my childhood is the rate at which it disappears.” …
: three words on beauty Il faut souffrir pour être belle…To be born as blonde and blue-eyed and beautiful as she was …
: he whispers, he hisses, he beckons “There are so many evidences of the immortality of the soul, even to a natural man’s …
: “But I do not want you to think that I am waging relentless war against Fortune. There is a time …
: From Donne: ”As with bodily disease, so also in spiritual disease the state of speechelessness is …
: some naive and uninformed reactions to seeing King Lear for the first time The tragedy of Lear is precisely not nihilistic. It consists of the moral order reacting to a moral …
: “Nothing in Hamlet goes according to plan, but everything happens by significant accident when …
: Is there a man who does not fear this? All holds. For we are strong and skilled; we have authority; we hold memory of evil; we are stern, …
: the short-cut of the eternal Imagine a man who gave a banquet feast and invited to it the halt, the blind, cripples, and beggars. …
: Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must come from old buildings. —Jane Jacobs, in …
: “(POLITICAL) SITE IS ETERNAL. The streets of Boston, tangled as they are, won’t move. Even the …
: this is probably me being ignorant and unsophisticated but This is wrong, right? “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its …
: “However peculiar they now seem, the beliefs of pre-modern people were normally a rational response …
: “Bodies are not “just” bodies. Bodies are persons made manifest. The sacramental principle is always …
: thankful for fasting The spiritual discipline of fasting has many rich benefits. One that has surprised me: new lenses on …
: cleverness and its dangers “One who ingeniously deceived himself by cleverly falling into the snare of cleverness, …
: the sweetness of Dante's similes “And as a little stork, eager to fly but afraid to leave the nest, will raise a wing then let …
: Why can’t we raise our kids to find “a use of leisure that is not a dismaying waste of a …