The Saunterer

Oliver Wendell Holmes on how to avoid growing old

    Oliver Wendell Holmes’ prescription for not aging:

    Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.

    (Quoted from The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible, by Eric Booth. Oxford University Press, 2009)

For a brief biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes, click here.

Edna Ferber's definition of Christmas

    Hear Edna Ferber:

    Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling.

Dian Fossey on why we should look up to the gorilla

    Dian Fossey studied gorillas, and it taught her this:

    The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people.

    (Quoted from The Daily Chronicle, January 16, 2020)

    For a brief biography of Dian Fossey, click here.

 

Robert P. Jones on racism

    In Robert P. Jones' recent book, White Too Long, is this sad sentence: The more racist attitudes a person holds, the more likely he or she is to identify as a white Christian.

    Robert P. Jones is the founder and chief executive officer of the Public Religion Research Institute. 

Mark Twain on the inventor of the telephone

    In 1890 Mark Twain issued a Christmas greeting, embracing ‘the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised,’ and ‘every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth, except the inventor of the telephone.’

(For a brief biography of Mark Twain, click here.)

Machiavelli on taking and not taking risks

    If someone is behaving cautiously and patiently and the times and circumstances are such that the approach works, he’ll be successful. But if times and circumstances change, everything goes wrong for him, because he hasn’t changed his approach to match. You won’t find anyone shrewd enough to adapt his character like this, in part because you can’t alter your natural bias and in part because, if a person has always been successful with a particular approach, he won’t easily be persuaded to drop it. So when the time comes for the cautious man to act impulsively, he can’t, and he becomes unstuck. 

    (Quoted from The New York Review of Books, October 22, 2020, page 42)
    For a brief biography of Machiavelli, click here.

 

 

 

Machiavelli on taking and not taking risks

    If someone is behaving cautiously and patiently and the times and circumstances are such that the approach works, he’ll be successful. But if times and circumstances change, everything goes wrong for him, because he hasn’t changed his approach to match. You won’t find anyone shrewd enough to adapt his character like this, in part because you can’t alter your natural bias and in part because, if a person has always been successful with a particular approach, he won’t easily be persuaded to drop it. So when the time comes for the cautious man to act impulsively, he can’t, and he becomes unstuck. 

    (Quoted from The New York Review of Books, October 22, 2020, page 42)
    For a brief biography of Machiavelli, click here.

 

 

 

Albert Einstein on the value of solitude

    Tell me your age, and I’ll tell you how much you value solitude — and the reverse is equally true. For as Albert Einstein said,

    I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

    (Quoted on page 128 of The Mind of God & Other Musings, by Shirley A. Jones. New World Library.)

Ian Beckwith on Donald Trump

    Writing in the June 19, 2020 issue of TLS, Ian Beckwith notes:

    Reading Margaret McMillan’s portrayal of the Kaiser Wilhelm II in The War That Ended Peace, “Woe to the country that has a child for a King”, it would be possible to substitute the name Donald Trump for Wilhelm II, such is the resemblance.

Wendell Berry on our paramount task

    We must not be content merely to advocate the principles necessary to the ecological and economic health of rural America. We must take care also to understand that such a healing involves the enactment of those principles by millions of unique individual farmers upon millions of unique small places. This is the paramount task of local adaptation, a requirement imposed be nature upon every creature, but from we humans, who in fact know better, have to our great cost and increasing danger exempted ourselves.

    For a brief biography of Wendell Berry, click here.

    (Quoted from All Animals)