Soren Kierkegaard

This Danish philosopher was the progenitor of existentialism. He held that existence means making choices and acting on them, with the most important being a "leap of faith" to overcome despair.

Katharine Butler Hathaway

"If you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, you life will be safe, expedient , and thin."

John Andrew Holmes

"The entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."

Ernest Hemingway

On this day in 1929 his "A Farewell to Arms" was published - the title taken from a 16th century poem by George Peele, in which Peele expresses regret to Queen Elizabeth I, that he is too old to bear arms for her. The arms dropped were those of Italian soldiers who gladly dropped them in the retreat from Caporietto in 1917. F. Scott Fitzgerald, asked to read the manuscript, sent Hemingway nine pages of suggest revisions, with a note saying "Our poor old friendship probably won't survive this but there you are----" At the bottom of the last page Hemingway wrote, "Kiss my ass."

Walter Hagen

"Don't hurry, don't worry. You're only here for a short visit. So be sure to stop and smell the flowers."

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

He was the formulator of the scientific method - his major contribution: proposing that inductive logic - the process of reasoning from the specific to the general - be used for scientific discovery, an approach thereafter embraced by modern science.

Samuel Johnson

"There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a cearture as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible."

Deadman's Hand

Jamws Butler "Wild Bill" Hickock was shot dead on August 2 1876 by Jack McCall. He was holding the most famous hand in poker, two black aces ans two black eights, thereafter ever known as the "Deadman's Hand."

Luigi Pirandello

"The secret of living is to find a pivot, the pivot of a concept on which you can make your stand."

John F. Kennedy

When President John F. Kennedy once entertained some Nobel prize winners at a White House dinner, he introduced them as "the most extraordinary collection of talents that has ever been gathered at the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Sherlock Holmes

"The Baker Street Irregulars were Sherlock Holmes' 'unofficial force', a dozen London urchins,apparently headed by a boy named Wiggins. Holmes paid each boy a shilling a day, with a guinea prize to anyone found the vital clue. Used by Holmes to search out information where the Police would be conspicuous."
(from Schott's Original Miscellany)

Oxymorons

"All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients."
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"Confound those who have made our comments before us."
(Aelius Donatus)

"My insignificance is significant. "
(rht)

Winston Churchill

Once when he was showing his paintings to his visitor Clare Booth Luce, she, ever with an opinion, thought one of his landscaped too somber - no life to it. Later, he painted in a frolicing lamb to the landscape and sent the painting to her, along with a note saying he hoped she would like this better now.

Winston Churchill

"You can keep experimenting. You can change your plan to meet the exigencies of time or weather. And always remember you can scrape it all away. Armed with a paint-box, one cannot be bored."
(from his "Painting as a Pastime")

Carl Sagan

"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."

Flannery O'Connor

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best- seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

Harold Nicolson

"The British historian and diplomat Harold Nicolson was famous among other things for observing in his diary that ninety-nine people out of a hundred are interesting, and the one-hundredth is interesting because he is the exception."
(from "Miles Gone By" by Wiliam F. Buckley Jr.)

Ronald Reagan

"Once, James Baker, his chief of staff, gave him a briefing book to review before presiding over an important conference of industrialized nations in Willliiamsburg, Virginia and Reagan never got around to opening the book. 'Well, Jim' he explained jauntily, 'The Sound of Music was on last night'."
(from "Presidential Diversions" by Paul F. Boller Jr.)

A Vignette

I am honored that my grand-daughter Rachel has chosen my blog as one of the many web postings that is well designed. Choices, with reasons supporting their choices, were required in her Purdue University English class. When I went to school computers were not yet in the dreams of even the most optimistic entrepreneurs.

Albert Camus

"If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one".

Albert Camus

"If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one".

Energy-Matter

Data from measuring the temperature of remnants of the big bang reveal that the contents of the universe consist of 21% unidentified dark matter, 75% unidentified dark energy that acts as a sort of antigravity, and only 4% of our world as we know it upon which all of our knowledge of science is based. (Data collected by the Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy Probe -WMAP)

"David"

On this date in 1504 Michelangelo's sculpture of "David" was unveiled. It had taken three years to complete and stood 17 feet 5 inches tall. Over the years it has faced challenges - it wa struck by lightning in 1512, had its arm broken off in 1527 (a new one was made), it was covered by wax in 1812. Some 30 years later it had a hydrochloric acid bath leaving it scratched and porous. Location - Florence Italy

"Salad Days"

The time of youth, innocence, and inexperence probably invented by Shakespeare in "Antony and Cleopatra" when Cleopatra, now enamored of Antony, speaks of her early admiration of Julius Caesar as foolish: "My salad days when I was green in judgement, cold in blood".

Joseph Conrad

On this day in 1890, at ge 32, he took command of a small stern-wheeler for a trip down the Congo River as the regular captain was ill - his only captaincy in all his years at sea, He was fulfilling a lifelong dream to see interior Africa. This trip was the genesis of his book "Heart of Darkness" published 12 years later.

Walter Scott (1771-1832)

Inventor of the historical novel, his most enduring was "Ivanhoe", a romantic adventure tied to Richard the Lion-Hearted's return from the Crusades. He was crippled by polio as a boy but met the setback with stoicism and nobility. He was also the author of the "Waverley" novels which he first published anonymously.

"A World Without Time"

I just finished this book by Brandeis University Philosophy Professor Palle Yourgrau. It will take me awhile to unscramble my mind. In the 1940s, logician Kurt Golel and Einstein became close friends. They walked together daily to and from their offices at Princeton University. They discussed ontomology, epistemology, the space-time continuum of Einstein's theory of general relativity. By 1949, Godel had produce a proof that in any universe described by the Theory of Relativity, time cannot exist. Einstein was unable to refute it. I couldn't follow the reasoning of Godel's "proof". Maybe some day I will learn to resist the challenge of trying to understand matter beyond my mental capacity - but your reach is suppoed to exeed your grasp.

Labor Day

On this holiday, in 2005, I fell and broke my hip and pelvis.
But I'm getting around fine now with my walker.

"If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten".
(anon)

Socrates

"If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart".