What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything.
McCullough, David. John Adams. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 287
-
-
“Popularity was never my mistress, nor was I ever, or shall I ever be a popular man,”
– John Adams to James Warren
It’s almost as if Adams knew his contributions to the formation of the United States would go overlooked. However, he always behaved with conviction.
McCullough, David. John Adams. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 373
-
Thanks to Madame Lafayette, they were seated in a gallery overlooking the choir, “as good a place as any in the church,” thought John Quincy, who in a long description of the spectacle in his diary demonstrated that besides being precociously erudite, he had learned, as his father urged, to observe the world around him and was well started on becoming an accomplished writer. He described the Parliament lined up to the right side of the choir, robed in scarlet and black, the Chambre des Comptes on the left, in robes of black and white; the bishops arriving two by two, “a purple kind of mantle over their shoulders,” the Archbishop of Paris, “a mitre upon his head,” and finally the arrival of the King.
John Quincy Adams heeding his father’s advice to observe the world around him.
Or as Teju Cole begs: observe, observe, observe.
McCullough, David. John Adams. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 327
-
True genius does what it takes to succeed, which is why Michelangelo, old, tired, irritated at not being able to go home to Florence, went to a building site in Rome every day and talked to people who hated him about hauling stone and carving pillars. As well as everything else, Michelangelo turned out to be a late bloomer in the art of running a construction site. Everyone who loves architecture can still feel glad about that today.
– Henry Oliver
Even Michelangelo took on projects that he wanted to pass on. But when the Pope asks you to become the architect for the St Peter’s basilica “yes” is your only response.
Also, maybe architecture isn’t as glamorous a profession as depicted?
Read the article in it’s entirety here. It will reveal to you new sides of Michelangelo.
Oliver, Henry. “It Is Never Too Late for Greatness.” CapX, July 4, 2024. https://capx.co/it-is-never-too-late-for-greatness/.
-
Once, for no reason other than intellectual curiosity, Adams rode to Windsor to call on the famous English astronomer Sir William Herschel, whose crowning achievement had been the discovery of the planet Uranus. Greeting Adams affably, Herschel was delighted to talk of his work, and Adams returned to Grosvenor Square elated. Nabby recorded that she had never known her father so gratified by a visit of any kind.
Lonely and isolated in London, John Adams took the opportunity to visit with Sir William Herschel.
Remember that today as you grill your burgers in celebration.
Happy Fourth of July!
McCullough, David. John Adams. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 343
-
Though it was past ten o’ clock at night, the sky still clung to and retained some lingering skirts of light from the departed day; and the sullen heats of the torrid afternoon broke up and rolled away at the dispersing touch of the cool fingers of the short midsummer night.
– Kenneth Grahame
BAM! Kenneth Grahame dropping you right into summer!
Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. United Kingdom, Welbeck Editions, 2021. p116
-
“Being interested is what is scarce.”
– Tyler Cowen
I’ve listened to this podcast 5, 6 times, pulling out a new insight from each listen. It’s an excellent primer on John Stuart Mill.
Start with Autobiography. It will get you interested. And listen to the podcast in full here.
“Reading John Stuart Mill.” The Common Reader (podcast), featuring Tyler Cowen, hosted by Henry Oliver, December 11, 2023. https://www.commonreader.co.uk/p/tyler-cowen-reading-john-stuart-mill.
-
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
– Samuel Johnson, RAMBLER, No. 2
Johnson, Samuel. Samuel Johnson: Selected Works (The Yale Edition). Edited by Howard D. Weinbrot and Robert DeMaria Jr., Yale University Press, 2020 pg. 9
-
Write early in the morning, cultivate memory, reread core books, take detailed reading notes, work on several projects at once, maintain a thick archive, rotate crops, take a weekly Sabbath, go to bed at the same time, exercise so hard you can’t think during it, talk to different kinds of people including the very young and very old, take words and their histories seriously (i.e., read dictionaries), step outside of the empire of the English language regularly, look for vocabulary from other fields, love the basic, keep your antennae tuned, and seek out contexts of understanding quickly (i.e., use guides, encyclopedias, and Wikipedia without guilt).”
I’d add Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Perplexity.ai to without guilt list.
H/T Austin Kleon
Hanrahan, Brían. “The Anthropoid Condition: An Interview with John Durham Peters.” Los Angeles Review of Books, July 10, 2015. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-anthropoid-condition-an-interview-with-john-durham-peters/.
-
I recall as a young boy owning some Willie Mays baseball cards. He simply seemed classier and more special than the other players, as if he had some magic, secret power that others did not.
– Tyler Cowen
GOAT.
Cowen, Tyler. “Thursday Assorted Links.” Marginal Revolution (blog). June 20, 2024. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/06/thursday-assorted-links-457.html.
Floodlights and Goalposts 