On Roads
Roads are our oldest artefacts. We create them instinctively, inadvertently, simply by going to and fro upon the earth and walking up and down on it. With every step, wherever we turn, we either find a road or make one. Roads don’t go anywhere, though. Once established, they remain fixed, stationary. We travel to Rome [...]
On Doors
What are they but holes with hinges, lidded interstices? They are almost nothing, a frame around empty space, yet everything swings on them. They stand there indifferent, impenetrable, not caring whether we go out or come in. We hurry through them, never sure in doing so whether we have just accepted an invitation or ignored [...]
Aphorisms by Warren Buffett
The other day I found a signed copy of Thoughts of Chairman Buffett by Warren Buffett at one of the used bookstalls underneath Waterloo Bridge in London. In the introduction, I learned that if I had invested $10,000 with Mr. Buffett in 1956 my money would have grown to $80,000,000 today. That would be just [...]
Aphorisms via Mark Vernon
Mark Vernon’s book, 42: Deep Thought on Life, the Universe, and Everything, is a collection of essayistic riffs spinning off from 42 different aphorisms. The book’s title is inspired, of course, by the supercomputer Deep Thought in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which comes up with the reply “42″ as the answer to, well, [...]
More Aphorisms by Joseph F. Conte
I first blogged about Joseph F. Conte’s aphorisms back in November of 2007. His most recent collection is Maxims for the Millennium, and in it he continues his aphoristic explorations, mostly in the manner of the great French moralists but with a dash of Karl Kraus-like sardonic humor thrown in. Speaking of Kraus, Conte quotes [...]
On Ears
The inner ear is a flowerbed inside a blacksmith’s shop. Down below the auditory canal—past the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup—sprout the hair cells of the cochlea, planted in tidy rows along the basilar membrane like geraniums in a window box. As the hammer and anvil pound sound waves into shape, the stirrup taps [...]
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