classics digests, reflections and reviews
LXXXIV: On Gathering and Digesting Ideas We ought to copy these bees, and sift whatever we have gathered from a varied course of reading, for such things are better preserved if they are kept separate ; then, by applying the supervising care with which our nature has endowed us,—in other words, our natural gifts,—we should so blend those several flavours into one delicious compound that, even though it betrays its […]
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Four weeks ago, on March 21, a few days after an official declaration of state of emergency, I plotted three graphs on the number of active COVID-19 cases in Asia, America and Europe. Updated graphs indicate changes in the past four weeks: In Europe, Ireland, Spain and Belgium have overtaken Italy in terms of active cases per 10,000 population; In Asia, Singapore and Turkey have seen dramatic increase in the […]
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A Historic Moment Living in a tourist destination has its advantages and disadvantages. We’ve mostly enjoyed the immense advantages here, but COVID-19 has changed that dramatically in the past couple of weeks, and perhaps weeks and months to come. Our city is one of the hardest hit by COVID-19 in the country. We’re also one of the first states/provinces in North America that have just declared a state of emergency: […]
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As I’ve recently updated the table of earliest New Testaments manuscripts, according to dates assigned by Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB) and New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room (NTVMR), I thought it would be interesting to see how these two data sources compare with one another. Both LDAB and NTVMR hold detailed information on thousands of manuscripts, but only about three hundred are in common between them, that is, entries […]
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XLI. On Divinity God is near you, he is with you, he is within you. This is what I mean, Lucilius : a holy spirit indwells within us. one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian. As we treat this spirit, so are we treated by it. Indeed, no man can be good without the help of God. Can one rise superior to fortune unless God […]
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II. On Discursive Reading Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master- thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having […]
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All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, Some exit on their sick-bed, some on the battlefield, others, like Socrates and Thomas More, were executed by the state they had loved and served. Thomas More lived in late 15th and early 16th century Europe, in the time of the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. Peter Ackroyd’s sympathetic and […]
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