An online commonplace book
“Griefs upon griefs! Disappointments upon disappointments. What then? This is a gay, merry world notwithstanding.”
– John Adams
The final John Adam’s quote in McCullough’s brilliant biography. A quote written in a letter to his friend Francis van der Kemp.
McCullough, David. John Adams. Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 651
A stream of visitors continued through the seasons and among them was young Ralph Waldo Emerson, who a few years earlier had graduated from Harvard as class poet. He found Adams upstairs in his library seated in a large overstuffed armchair, dressed in a blue coat, a cotton cap covering his bald head. Recounting the interview, Emerson wrote, “He talks very distinctly for so old a man–enters bravely into long sentences which are interrupted by want of breath but carries them invariably to a conclusion without ever correcting a word.”
You know, you can just go visit your heroes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson for John. John for Sir William Herschel.
Posted while watching Iron Man. The first one.
McCullough, David. John Adams. Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 640
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
She shows us that simply deciding to act when faced with a challenge can reveal new depths of capability. The more she did, the more capable she became. ‘Do your work,’ said Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘and you shall reinforce yourself.’
Henry Oliver on Katharine Graham
That from the introduction to Henry’s new book: Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life
What Emerson kept, and what he recommended enthusiastically to others, were what used to be called commonplace books, blank bound volumes in which one writes down vivid images, great descriptions, striking turns of phrase, ideas, high points from one’s life and reading — things one wants to remember and hold on to. A commonplace book is not a diary, an appointment calendar, or a record of one’s feelings. If your journal consists of the best moments of your life and reading, then rereading it will be like walking a high mountain trail that goes from peak to peak without the intervening descent into the trough of routine. Just reading in such a journal of high points will tighten your strings and raise your pitch
– Robert D. Richardson
This is the aim of Floodlights and Goalposts. I hope its a high mountain trail that goes from peak to peak.
If you’re keeping a commonplace book, which I hope you are, or any notebook, be sure to go back and re-read what you’ve captured.
Richardson, Robert D.. First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process. United States, University of Iowa Press, 2015.
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self-Reliance
Emerson is someone I often hear quoted and mentioned on podcasts, but how many have truly read him?
I had not.
As you make your way through the classics you begin to realize, they’re classics for two reasons.
One, their themes, envy in this case, are timeless. This is true for novels, essays, or epic poems.
And two, they are typically more readable than you’d first imagine. See tip #6: Read Western canonical literature.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Illustrated Emerson: Essays and Poems. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. 2018
Floodlights and Goalposts 