• The Trip to Fallsburg

    “Fallsburg. Calling at Fallsburg,” the announcer said as the train hissed to a standstill. I hadn’t planned to leave the city during my trip, but after elbowing through the swarm upon swarm of tourists, even a day’s escape sounded like heaven. Every town has a list of unmissable sights; however, I found delightfully little written about Fallsburg. When one of the few reviews mentioned what sounded like missing the open arms of a tourist trap, I bought my ticket.

  • When I Feel Small

    Maybe, though, just maybe, it’s ok to face the fear as a small Whitefoot mouse does. “The little life she had, she loved dearly, and so far she had taken excellent care of it.”

  • The Courage to Let Things Be

    And that’s where the heart of the matter lies—not just in how we read a story, but in how we engage the world itself. Do we approach the world to live with it—or to take it apart in order to dominate it?

  • Hazlitt on the Ignorance of the Learned

    Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are often less made use of as "spectacles" to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions.

  • Seneca on the Requirement of Usefulness

    What is required, you see, of any man is that he should be of use to other men—if possible, to many; failing that, to a few; failing that, to those nearest him; failing that, to himself.

  • Tolstoy on the Danger of Propriety

    “Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,” it suddenly occurred to him. “But how could that be, when I did everything properly?” he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible.

  • Guardini on the Autonomous Path to the Machine

    Machines are certainly created by people, but the path to them leads by way of such radical changes that the result for the living feelings of those who use them is that the machines seem to be strange and autonomous.

  • Eliot on Education and Social Ideals

    What we remark especially about the educational thought of the last few years, is the enthusiasm with which education has been taken up as an instrument for the realisation of social ideals. It would be a pity if we overlooked the possibilities of education as a means of acquiring wisdom; if we belittled the acquisition of knowledge for the satisfaction of curiosity, without any further motive than the desire to know; and if we lost our respect for learning.