35 pieces of practical wisdom from my common place book
Ideas that have stayed with me
Starting in 2011, I kept a common place book, which I put aside a few years ago. It fell off a shelf this week, so I scanned through it and thought a lot of it was worth sharing. Transcribing the whole thing would be a burden on the reader, so instead I’m giving you thirty-five of the entries that have stayed with me the most.
Remember: The next book club is on 22nd October, 19.00 UK time. We are reading John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography. You can find the schedule here.
In the front of the book I copied out these two epigraphs.
—“Moral education is impossible apart from the habitual vision of greatness.”
Alfred North Whitehead
—“You can never be wise unless you love reading.”
Samuel Johnson
“I am resolved the rise with the sun and to study Scriptures on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings, and to study some Latin author the other three mornings. Noon and nights I shall read English authors… I will rouse up my mind and fix my attentions. I will stand collected within myself and think upon what I read—what I see. I will strive with all my soul to be something more than persons who have had less advantage than myself.”
John Adams, diary entry, 21st July 1756 (the following week he wrote, “A very rainy day. Dreamed away the time.”)“I wander about London quite a lot. And every city, of course, is a theatre, isn’t it?”
Doris Lessing, Paris Review interview“A writer—and, I believe, generally all persons—must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource.”
Borges“Every man is to take existence on the terms on which it is given to him.”
Samuel Johnson“Go directly to the seat of knowledge.”
Marcus Aurelius“The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. No more deadly harm can be done to young minds than by deprecation of the present. The present contains all that there is.”
Alfred North Whitehead“Weak people never put an end to anything themselves: they always expect things to come to an end.”
Turgenev, Torrents of Spring“A special meeting was held at Brooks’s this afternoon formally to expel the member who has been rude to the servants and who has used bad language. The chairman announced that he had just received a letter from the member announcing his resignation after all, and promising never to cross the threshold of the club again. Great relief was expressed by everybody at this end to their embarrassment. Later in the day, I passed the man, looking unconcerned and truculent under the arcade of the Ritz. Instantly I felt sorry for him and wondered why he had behaved like this. I can quite understand how, if one senses that one is disliked, one is impelled to make oneself detested.”
James Lees-Milne, Diaries 18th March 1942“A failure is someone who doesn’t know what he wants or jibs at the price.”
Auden“Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.”
Auden“All that the Western Canon can bring is the proper use of our solitude. Reading the very best writers is not going to make us better citizens.”
Harold Bloom, The Western Canon“The more accurate the machine gets, the lazier the questions become.”
Amit Singhal, Head of Search at Google“Civilisation is built on the practice of keeping promises. It is immoral to make promises that one cannot in practice fulfil in the sense that the recipient expects.”
Why don’t we learn from history? B. H. Liddell Hart“Better a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished.”
King Lear“All things are full of labour.”
Ecclesiastes“To rejoice in his labour: That is the gift of God.”
Solomon“Your work is hard. Do you suppose I mention that because I pity you? No; not a bit.”
Theodore Roosevelt“I would write ads for deodorants or labels for catsup bottles if I had to. The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.”
John Updike“It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.”
Samuel Johnson“You geometers… nothing’s outside your scope when it comes to measurement. Well, if you’re such an expert, measure a man’s soul; tell me how large or small that is.”
Seneca, Letter LXXXVIII“No wise man ever wished to be younger.”
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects“He had given up the good in his life because a fault ran through it.”
Tobias Woolf, Old School“It is only since the 1914-18 war that it has been fashionable to ignore the past en bloc.”
Bertrand Russell, On Being Modern MindedWe are suffering not from the decay of theological beliefs but from the loss of solitude.”
Russell, ibid.“The higher productivity of co-operation under division of labour makes society the foremost means of every individual for the attainment of his own ends whatever they may be.”
Mises, Human Action“Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing on others, he has a right to do for himself.”
Burke, Reflections“Politics are at once a game and a high art.”
Gladstone“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a moulder of consensus.”
Martin Luther King, On Staying Awake Through a Revolution“A monarch cannot disagree with himself, out of envy or interest; but an assembly may; and that to such a height, as may produce a civil warre.”
Hobbes, Leviathan“Consent lies at the origin of power.”
Levi Strauss“I don’t see how this world is to be managed if we don’t pity each other.”
Penelope Fitzgerald“What keeps people from the path of virtue is that they think they have already gone along it.”
Petrarch, The Secret“The same age, which produces great philosophers and poets, usually abounds with skillful weavers, and ship-carpenters. We cannot reasonably expect, that a piece of wollen-cloth will be wrought to perfection in a nation, which is ignorant of astronomy, or where ethics are neglected.”
David Hume, Of Refinement in the Arts“To understand the works of celebrated authors, to comprehend their systems, and retain their reasonings, is a task more than equal to common intellects; and he is by no means to be accounted useless or idle, who has stored his mind with acquired knowledge, and can detail it occasionally to others who have less leisure or weaker abilities.”
Samuel Johnson, Adventurer No. 85“Read attentively.”
Marcus Aurelius
I love 28, Martin Luther King. We could do with a consensus moulding leader or two now, I feel. Focus groups only take you so far!
Question- what is your thought on copying down quotes from other people’s lists, without reading the underlying source? I don’t mean to be a pedant! I only thought of because I recently read Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” (I know, shoulda read it sooner.). There are 1000 amazing quotes in it, many of which I know and have seen other places and even have a printed postcard of one. But in the context of the essay they’re very different. Two potential responses, and wondering what this very wise crowd thinks: 1. If they’re meaningful to you, as-is, and made you think- who cares?! Or 2. Context is helpful and often enough is important and will improve the quote.