Few men are great, but all great men are men, and when I read of one I want to be told how he was great, not how he was a man.
Jan 012024
Reading
The dead alive and busy.
—Vaughan
Dec 142023
The audience demands that you write not only for them but with them and about them — that you see with their eyes, only better.
Nov 142023
The specialist reviews the generalist: “A thorough and knowledgeable overview… regrettably full of errors on my particular subject.”
Nov 102023
To encounter an author who writes of how things are is a great shock, from which we recover by disputing how he might wish them to be.
Sep 222023
Pretentious nonsense is written in a certain unmistakable cadence, a low hum calculated to lull you into acquiescence through inattention. You’re not supposed to try too hard to piece the meaning together, and you are always sorry if you do.
Sep 012023
The only way to escape the thrall of a philosopher is to read him.
Aug 222023
We would all be incomparably better-educated if we had read the same books in the right order.
Jul 132023
We used to burn old books; the modern refinement is to alter them.
Jan 232023
One can be ill-read on many books and well-read on a very few.
Jan 182023
One needs a lot of learning to wear it lightly.