“And I remember always that knowledge is made for cutting.”
– Dean W. Ball
From his essay: How I Work
Inspiring, especially the Beethoven bits.
Dean W. Baker, “How I Work,” Hyperdimensional (blog), 2025, https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/how-i-work.
Tag: Essays
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It is true that Christianity teaches us to place others before ourselves in order to gain heaven; but Christianity also teaches us to do good to our fellow men for the love of God. What a magnificent expression; man uses his intelligence to penetrate the mind of God and sees that God’s aim is order. He freely joins in this grand design and, sacrificing his private interests to this admirable order of all creation, he expects no other reward than the joy of contemplating it.
– Alexis de Tocqueville
A magnificent expression indeed. Contemplate creation today.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. London, Penguin Publishing Group, 2003. pg 614
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I realize that a man’s arm can be amputated to save his life; but I am unwilling to be convinced that he is going to display as much dexterity as with the arm intact.
– Alexis de Tocqueville
A Tocqueville quote for our days?
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. London, Penguin Publishing Group, 2003. pg 609
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So, as men become more equal and individualism more of a menace, newspapers are more necessary. The belief that they just guaranteed freedom would diminish their importance; they sustain civilization.
– Alexis de Tocqueville
If Tocqueville believed this in the 1800s, then how does it apply today?
What happens when newspapers fade? What replaces them?
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. London, Penguin Publishing Group, 2003. pg 601
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I found her standing on the hearth with her nose buried in a branch from a balsam fir, which she had hung over the fireplace. With it hung a harness strap of sleigh bells. The branch had unquestionably been whacked from a tree in the woods behind our son’s house in Maine and had made the long trip south. It wore the look and carried the smell of authenticity. “There!” said my wife, as though she had just delivered a baby.
E.B. White
E.B. White did the impossible, brought Christmas to Florida.
White, E. B.. Essays of E. B. White. United States: HarperCollins, 2014. pg 192
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Her egg is so richly brown, so wondrously beautiful as to defy description. Every fall, when the first pullet egg turns up on the range, I bring it into the living room and enshrine it in a black duckshead pottery ashtray, where it remains until Halloween, a symbol of fertility, admired by all.
– E.B. White
E.B. White is much more than Charlotte’s Web. His essay’s rip. Mesmerize.
How many writers lull you into reading a three page essay about brown eggs vs white eggs?
White, E. B.. Essays of E. B. White. United States, HarperCollins, 2014. pg 75
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This subterranean fire has its altar in each man’s breast, for in the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveller cherishes a warmer fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons.
Henry D. ThoreauThoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013.
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The recent tracks of the fox or otter, in the yard, remind us that each hour of the night is crowded with events, and the primeval nature is still working and making tracks in the snow.
Henry D. ThoreauNature doesn’t pause. This is something we inherently know, but it takes a keen observer like Thoreau to call our attention to it.
Thoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013. pp28
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I was introduced to Trae Stephen’s idea of choosing Good Quests through the Meditations with Zohar podcast. His essay (cowritten with Markie Wagner) explains the idea further:
At the dawn of the 20th Century, the Wright Brothers embarked on a quest to build the first controlled airplane. A half century later, NASA embarked on a quest to put a man on the moon. Combustion, penicillin, nuclear fission; the discovery of America, the drafting of the Constitution, Normandy — history is defined by protagonists pursuing good quests.
And a simple definition of a good quest:
In the most simple terms possible: a good quest makes the future better than our world today, while a bad quest doesn’t improve the world much at all, or even makes it worse.
So a question to ask ourselves as the New Year ushers in: What’s your quest?
Maybe write the idea on a notecard and pin it above your desk: Choose good quests.
Read Trae Stephens and Markie Wagner’s essay in full here.
And listen to his interview with Zohar Atkins here.
Happy New Year!
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Montaigne loved open debate. “No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers with my own.” He like being contradicted, as it opened up more interesting conversations and helped him to think–something he preferred to do through interaction rather than staring into the fire like Descartes. His friend Florimond de Raemond described his conversation as “the sweetest and most enriched with graces.” Yet when Montaigne was not feeling sweet, or when he was carried away by the topic of discussion, he could be vociferous. His passion led him to say things that were indiscreet, and he encouraged others to do the same.
Bakewell, Sarah. How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. New York: Other Press, 2011 pp170.
Floodlights and Goalposts 