As a great part of our life is spent in sleep, during which we have sometimes pleasant and sometimes painful dreams, it becomes of some consequence to obtain the one kind and avoid the other; for whether real or imaginary, pain is pain and pleasure is pleasure. If we can sleep without dreaming, it is [...]
Two books have emerged from the hundreds that are being published on the art of writing. One of them is The Lure of the Pen, by Flora Klickmann, and the other is Learning to Write, a collection of [Robert Louis] Stevenson’s meditations on the subject, issued by Scribners. At first glance one might say that [...]
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots [...]
When I make Choice of a Subject that has not been treated on by others, I throw together my Reflections on it without any Order or Method, so that they may appear rather in the Looseness and Freedom of an Essay, than in the Regularity of a Set Discourse. It is after this Manner that [...]
Anger is one of the sinews of the soul; he that wants it hath a maimed mind, and with Jacob, sinew-shrunk in the hollow of his thigh, must needs halt. Nor is it good to converse with such as cannot be angry, and with the Caspian Sea never ebb nor flow. This anger is either [...]