The Saunterer

William Wordsworth on the meaning of life

  A fellow Saunterer wrote to us that “a William Wordsworth sonnet entitled, The World is Too Much With Us, dated 1807, has given me guidance throughout my adult life.”  He added, “Seems human nature is still what it always has been.”     Listen:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The Winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not - Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
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    For thoughts on the sonnet, click here.

Florence Nightingale on why she worked

    Florence Nightingale was a crusader. A crusader is someone who works tirelessly to accomplish a great public goal. Hers was to reform health care. Crusaders sacrifice all else in their lives to do their crusading work. She wrote to the point:

If you think that my living the Robinson Crusoe life I do is the effect of Stoicism, there never was a greater mistake. It is entirely the effect of calculation. I cannot live to work unless I give up all that makes life pleasant. People say, ‘Oh see the doctors have said these 8 years she could not live 6 months - therefore it is all a mistake’. They never say: she has lived 8 years when the doctors said she could not live 6 months by adopting this kind of life, of sacrificing everything else in order to work. . . . But I have ceased to try to make anybody understand this. I do hope I am getting wiser in this respect - not explaining. . . . I never said it was ‘best for me’. All I said was, it was best for the work - or rather it is the only way in which the work could be done. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 197.)

    Giusto Gervasutti, the subject of this weblog’s post of September 25, wrote of his work, rock climbing: “The moments when the heart really overflows with happiness come when the sense of life is heightened by tension and struggle - the actual moments of conquest, or more often of defeat, and not the dead moments when victory has been achieved.” That tells us he was not a crusader. A crusader would write: “The moments when the heart really overflows with happiness come at the actual moment of conquest, when victory has been achieved.”

    A Sauntering thought: Ingrid Newkirk, cofounder and head of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), is a crusader. Her crusade is to reform the world’s attitude toward animals. She works tirelessly for animal rights: the right for all animals to live free of those who would enslave them, harass them, harness them, maim them, take their lives, not let them live on their own terms. She is the animals’ Florence Nightingale.
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    For a brief biography of Florence Nightingale, click here.
    For a brief biography of Ingrid Newkirk, click here.

Giusto Gervasutti on how to be really happy

    Giusto Gervasutti once wrote about how to be really happy:

We stopped on a large rock terrace, about twenty yards from the dome of ice that forms the summit, and stretched ourselves out in the sun. It was hot, and we badly wanted to sleep. We felt no shiver of joy, no ecstasy in victory. We had reached our objective, and already it lay behind us. A dream had become reality - and I felt something close to bitterness. How much finer it would be, I couldn’t help thinking, to long for something all one’s life, to fight for it without respite, and never to achieve it!

But this was only another episode. Down in the valley again I should at once look round for some other goal, and if it didn’t exist, I would create it! I do not know why people associate a man’s happiness with the satisfaction of all his desires - a kind of eternal beatitude, which could just as well be a state of complete apathy. The completely happy man would have nothing left to say, nothing left to do. For myself I prefer an unattainable happiness, always near, always elusive: the prize which vanishes every time one grasps it, to give way to another, still harder, still more distant. The moments when the heart really overflows with happiness come when the sense of life is heightened by tension and struggle - the actual moments of conquest, or more often of defeat, and not the dead moments when victory has been achieved. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 187.)

    Are moments like these the only ones when the heart really overflows with happiness? Or course not, but still. . . .

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    For a bit about Giusto Gervasutti, click here.

Henry Adams on choosing one’s path

    For many of us, the best path through life is an unpopular path. Included in having this view is Henry Adams:

My path is a different one; and was never chosen in order to suit other people’s tastes, but my own. Of course a man can’t do this without appearing to think a great deal about himself, and perhaps doing so in fact. The very line he draws requires care to observe, and is invidious to everyone else. In America there is such class, and the tendency is incessant to draw everyone into the main current. I have told you before that I mean to be unpopular, and do it because I must do it, or do as other people do and give up the path I chose for myself years ago. Your ideas and mine don’t agree, but they never have agreed. You like the strife of the world. I detest it and despise it. You work for power. I work for my own satisfaction. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 195.)
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    For a brief biography of Henry Adams, click here.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton on which books of literature are best to read

    Though it sounds paradoxical it is true: the best books of literature are often the oldest. Edward Bulwer-Lytton tells why:

In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern. New books revive and redecorate old ideas; old books suggest and invigorate new ideas.
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    For a biography of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, click here.

Gandhi would have known why America is destroying the environment

    Any religion that does not care about guarding Earth against global warming and loss of species isn’t much of a religion. America is mainly a Christian-led society. Christians make most of the decisions that have the consequences that all Earth is forced to live with. Hear Mahatma Gandhi:

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

    Sanctimonious is the word.
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    For a brief biography of Mahatma Gandhi, click here.

Sylvia Plath on her refusal to be typecast in marriage

    Sylvia Plath refused the conventional marriage role of her times:

And there it is: when asked what role I will plan to fill, I say, “What do you mean, role? I plan not to step into a part on marrying – but to go on living as an intelligent mature human being, growing and learning as I always have. No shift, no radical change in life habits.” Never will there be a circle, signifying me and my operations, confined solely to home, other womenfolk, and community service, enclosed in the larger worldly circle of my mate, who brings home from his periphery of contact with the world the tales only of vicarious experience to me. . . . (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 288.)

    typecast. adj.: “Identified with a particular kind of part.” v.: “To represent or regard as a stereotype.” (Oxford English Dictionary)

    Society commits an inhuman injustice when it tries to typecast. The child is female: here are her acceptable roles. The child’s skin color is this: here is the proper part for it.
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    For a biography of Sylvia Plath, click here.

William Blake on why cruelty to animals is ungodly

    Why cruelty to animals is ungodly is unmistakably said in these lines of William Blake:

A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all heaven in a Rage.
A dove house fill’d with doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.
A dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A Horse misus’d upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fibre from the Brain does tear.
A Skylark wounded in the wing,
A Cherubim does cease to sing. . . .

(Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 346.)
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    For a biography of William Blake, click here.

Alexandra David-Néel on the charm of solitude and time spent alone

    Of what use is solitude and time spent alone? Hear Alexandra David-Néel:

Whatever those unacquainted with it may think, solitude and utter loneliness are far from being devoid of charm. Words cannot convey the almost voluptuous sweetness of the feelings experienced. . . . Mind and senses develop their sensibility in this contemplative life made up of continual observations and reflections. Does one become a visionary or, rather, is it not that one has been blind until then? (Quoted from The New Quotable Woman.)
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    For a biography of Alexandra David-Néel, click here.

If Bill & Melinda Gates really cared about improving the world

    If Bill and Melinda Gates really cared about improving the world, they would be spending most of their charitable foundation’s money for lowering the fertility in poor nations. On this subject we recommend reading Jeffrey D. Sachs’ essay “Lower Fertility: A Wise Investment,” in the September 2006 issue of Scientific American. Sachs argues that “plans that encourage voluntary, steep reductions in the fertility rates of poor nations pay dividends in sustainability for everyone.”

    Sachs gives four steps that “can reduce fertility rates dramatically within 15 years.” Why take them? He explains: “A move to lower fertility rates will mean healthier children, much faster growth in living standards and reduced environmental stressors.”

    To read his essay online, click here.