The Saunterer

William Hazlitt on devotion to elegant trifles

    According to William Hazlitt, Horace Walpole had an inverted sense of value, which of its rarity made it wonderful:

    His mind as well as his house was piled up with Dresden china and illuminated through painted glass; and we look upon his heart to have been little better than a case full of enamels, painted eggs, ambers, lapis-lazuli cameos, vases, and rock-crystals. This may in some degree account for his odd and quaint manner of thinking, and his utter poverty of feeling: He could not get a plain thought out of that cabinet of curiosities, his mind;—and he had no room for feeling,—no place to plant it in, or leisure to cultivate it. He was at all times a slave to elegant trifles, and could no more screw himself up into a decided and solid personage, than he could divest himself of petty jealousies and miniature animosities. In one word, everything about him was little, and the smaller the object and the less its importance, the higher did his estimation and his praise of it ascend. He piled trifles to a colossal height—and made a pyramid of nothing “most marvellous to see.”

    (Quoted from page 24 of The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity, by Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber. Princeton University Press, 2004.)
    For a brief biography of Horace Walpole, click here. For images of or relating Horace Walpole, click here.
    For a brief biography of William Hazlitt, click here. For a brief biography of Robert K. Merton, click here.

Charlie Chaplin on taking the time to get it right

    Let’s say you want to create a masterpiece of something. What part of yourself would you most rely on? Intelligence? Values? Patience? Charlie Chaplin tells you:

    The whole scene lasted seventy seconds, but it took five days of retaking to get it right. This was not the girl’s fault, but partly my own, for I had worked myself into a neurotic state of wanting perfection. City Lights took more than a year to make.

    (Quoted from page 211 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Charlie Chaplin, click here. For images of or relating Charlie Chaplin, click here.

James Laughlin on the trouble with dying

    Let James Laughlin tell you something you don’t know: why you don’t want to die.

THE JUNK COLLECTOR

what bothers me most about
the idea of having to die

(sooner or later) is that
the collection of junk I

have made in my head will
presumably be dissipated

not that there isn’t more
and better junk in other

heads & always will be but
I have become so fond of

my own head’s collection.

    (James Laughlin’s poem is quoted from page 40 of the April 2, 2015, issue of The New York Review of Books.)
    For a brief biography of James Laughlin, click here. For images of or relating James Laughlin, click here.

Michel de Montaigne on dying of old age

    In Montaigne’s eyes, living is being forced ahead through a landscape of hidden landmines. If none get you, the Grim Reaper deals you his trump card, a natural death.

    To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and therefore so much less natural than the others. `Tis the last and extremest sort of dying, and the more remote the less to be hoped for. It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass: which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded.

    (Quoted from page 13 of the March, 2015, issue of The Scientist.)
    For a brief biography of Michel de Montaigne, click here. For images of or relating Michel de Montaigne, click here.

Winston Churchill on uncertainty and drama

    Maybe you’re familiar with the subject of inferential statistics. It’s a method for reducing the uncertainty in samples of data, motivated by the idea that being uncertain is a bad thing to have in the world. Here is Winston Churchill showing us otherwise: good existing only because of uncertainty:

    Without this measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.

    (Quoted from page 11 of Everyday Quantum Reality, by David A. Grandy. Indiana University Press, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Winston Churchill, click here. For images of or relating Winston Churchill, click here.
    For a brief biography of David A. Grandy, click here. For images of or relating David A. Grandy, click here.

Edmund Burke on how difficulty helps us

    Edmund Burke describes how doing difficult projects shapes and improves us in ways easy projects cannot.

    Thus it has been the glory of the great masters in all the arts to confront and to overcome; and when they had overcome the first difficulty, to turn it into an instrument for new conquests over new difficulties; thus to enable them to extend the empire of science, and even to push forward beyond the reach of their original thoughts the landmarks of the human understanding itself. Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a paternal Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.

    (Quoted from page 141 of Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke. Yale University Press, 2003.)
    For a brief biography of Edmund Burke, click here. For images of or relating Edmund Burke, click here.

Irving Singer on how to be happy

    What do you think — Does "intermeshed love," as Irving Singer describes it, drive happiness?

    I envision the good life in its totality as including the love of persons, things, and ideals so intricately intermeshed that the meaning in one contributes to the meaningfulness of the other two. That eventuates in the state of happiness that everyone desires.

    (Quoted from page xv of Meaning in Life, by Irving Singer. MIT Press, 2010)

    For information on Irving Singer and his academic work, click here. For images of or relating him, click here.

J. C. on predicting where advances in technology will lead

    The writer of the Times Literary Supplement’s "NB column" goes by the nickname J. C. In the January 30, 2015, issue, J. C. wrote:

    The arrival of a television set in every living room in the 1950s was predicted to kill off radio. Result? More radio. In the 1970s, television was on the point of annihilating newspapers. Result? Thicker newspapers. We were warned in the 80s that video spelled oblivion for big-screen movies. Outcome? The extinction of video.

Bertrand Russell on saving oneself from despondency

    The more intellectual you are, the greater the chance his method will work for you:

    My window looked out upon two Lombardy poplars, each about a hundred feet high, and I used to watch the shadow of the house creeping up them as the sun set. In the morning I woke very early and sometimes saw Venus rise. On one occasion I mistook the planet for a lantern in the wood. I saw the sunrise on most mornings, and on bright April days I would sometimes slip out of the house for a long walk before breakfast. I watched the sunset turn the earth red and the clouds golden; I listened to the wind, and exulted in the lightning. Throughout my childhood I had an increasing sense of loneliness, and of despair of ever meeting anyone with whom I could talk. Nature and books and (later) mathematics saved me from complete despondency.

    (Quoted from page 288 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Bertrand Russell, click here. For images of or relating Bertrand Russell, click here.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses

    Sauntering through a book about water brought us Saint-Exupéry mentioning “a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.” After you read it below, ask yourself if the phrase describes a gratification certain works of art give.

    Water has no taste, no color, no odor; it cannot be defined, yet is relished while ever mysterious. . . . It fills us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.

    (Quoted from page 77 of Dry Run: Preventing the Next Urban Water Crisis , by Jerry Yudelson. New Society Publishers, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, click here. For images of or relating to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, click here.
    For a brief biography of Jerry Yudelson, click here. For images of or relating to Jerry Yudelson, click here.