"What is more important in a library than anything else — is the fact that it exists."

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“If God is God, he is not good. If God is good, he is not God.”

“The Paris Review interview series”

“It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.”

“Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words.”

“Religion is at its best when it makes us ask hard questions of ourselves. It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else.”

“Archibald MacLeish's Grave”

Resonant Thoughts

"In an essay entitled ‘The Poet’, published in 1844, the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson lamented the narrow definition of beauty subscribed to by his peers, who tended to reserve the term exclusiv…"

— Alain de Botton

Literature1969

#books

"No talent is required to reproduce. Nature has done a tremendous job in creating this extraordinary piece — the body. The body does not want to learn anything from culture. It doesn't want to know any…"

— U. G. Krishnamurti

Religion1918–2007

#knowledge

"Any of these antecedents could have been connected with different consequences—in particular with many scenarios involving safe landings. What we have done is a creative act, but the problem is that w…"

— Robyn Dawes

Literature1936–2010

#art

"One seeking to understand the recurrent ebb and flow of economic activity characteristic of the present day finds these numerous explanations both suggestive and perplexing. All are plausible, but whi…"

— Wesley Clair Mitchell

Economics1874–1948

#time