• Lewis on Two Types of Understanding

    Human intellect is incurably abstract. Pure mathematics is the type of successful thought. Yet the only realities we experience are concrete – this pain, this pleasure, this dog, this man. While we are loving the man, bearing the pain, enjoying the pleasure, we are not intellectually apprehending Pleasure, Pain or Personality. When we begin to do so, on the other hand, the concrete realities sink to the level of mere instances or examples: we are no longer dealing with them, but with that which they exemplify. This is our dilemma – either to taste and not to know or to know and not to taste – or, more strictly, to…

  • David Foster Wallace on Entertainment

    Who would say entertainment is bad? I mean, I wouldn't say entertainment is bad. But a model of life in which I have a right to be entertained all the time seems to me not to be a promising one. Right?

  • Galsworthy on the Wish to Love the World

    Only one thing really troubled him, sitting there — the melancholy craving in his heart — because the sun was like enchantment on his face and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's rustle was so gentle, and the yew-tree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon pale in the sky. He might wish and wish and never get it — the beauty and the loving the world!

  • Schall on Higher Education’s Neglect of Higher Things

    I do not think that our higher educational institutions encourage in us a serious consideration of the power of the highest things. I have noticed too many intelligent and sensitive young men and women who darkly suspect this lack, especially in the best schools, I would say, because the best schools often do not realize that they are missing the most important things.