“The wolf that one hears is worse than the orc that one fears.”
– Boromir
Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel. The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings. United States, Ballantine Books, 1965. pg389
Category: ideas
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Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians.
This sentence reads like a modern “Once upon a time”. Immediately after reading it I felt like yeah, I want to be part of this story.
Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. United Kingdom, Bloomsbury, 2005. pg3
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Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, lofty origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your brilliance penetrate into the darkness of my understanding and take from me the double darkness in which I have been born, an obscurity of both sin and ignorance. Give me a sharp sense of understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally. Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations, and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm. Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in completion; through Christ our Lord Amen
As students return to school and adults return home from holiday a prayer to whisper before the bell rings or logging on to your email.
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“Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.”
– Michelangelo
Or write. Or code. Or pitch. Or read. Or blog.
Do not waste time.
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024. pg 278 of the Kindle Edition
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A photograph is easily printed and reproduced and shared on social media. A drawing, on the other hand, is a more deliberate act. It slows me down. I do it in order to slow-jam the news.
Kumar, Amitava. The Blue Book: A Writer’s Journal. India, HarperCollins Publishers India, 2022. pg 76
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Doodling here is writing’s other self, its shadow form. As much as they tell us about writing, doodles tell us about reading. They get at the heart of the critical act by seeming to solicit interpretation, then skittering away when we get down to the business of studying them. They might, after all, register no more than the inky imprints of the pleasures of mark-making or the necessity of testing the pen. Take a doodle too seriously, and you risk finding only your own desire for meaning bounced back at you.
Draw.
Polly Dickson, “Doodle Nation: Notes on Distracted Drawing,” The Paris Review (blog), July 17, 2024, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2024/07/17/doodle-nation-notes-on-distracted-drawing/.
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My debt to Plato is a certain number of sentences: the like to Aristotle. A large number, yet still a finite number, make the worth of Milton and Shakespeare, to me. I would therefore run over what I have written, save out the good sentences, and destroy the rest.
He only is a good writer who keeps one eye on his page and with the other sweeps over things. So that every new sentence brings us a new contribution of observation.
Richardson, Robert D.. First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process. United States, University of Iowa Press, 2015. pg 53,54
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“Reason holds the helm, but passions are the gales.”
– John Adams
John Adams was enlightened to the human heart.
McCullough, David. John Adams. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 421
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He was a man of immensely strong faith. A faith that balanced well with his reason.
Malcolm Guite on Dr. Johnson
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That one had to keep a “good heart,” come what may, was Abigail’s lifelong creed. “A merry heart doeth good like medicine,” she loved to say, quoting Proverbs. “I hate to complain,” she now wrote. “No one is without difficulties, whether in high or low life, and every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.
With all of the Richmond Hill house sick, Abigail Adam’s “good heart” endured.
The most formidable first lady of all time?
McCullough, David. John Adams. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 423
Floodlights and Goalposts 