Category: Studiousness
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Docendo Discimus
Teaching, we learn. As it stands, a maxim, and true as far as it goes. But in need of qualification which, when added, makes it a maxim no longer. Brevity is essential to the maxim as it is to the aphorism and the epigram. Closer to the truth is the following. Teaching, we learn; but…
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Inheritance and Appropriation
The high school I attended required each student to take two years of Latin. Years later the requirement was dropped. When a fundraiser contacted me for a donation, I said, "You eliminated Latin, why should I give you a donation?" He replied that the removal of Latin made room for Chinese. What I should…
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On Books and Gratitude
Occasionally, Robert Paul Wolff says something at his blog that I agree with completely, for instance: To an extent I did not anticipate when I set out on life’s path, books have provided many of the joys and satisfactions I have encountered. I am constantly grateful to the scholars and thinkers who have written, and…
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Roger Scruton on the Decline of the Modern University
Our man in Boulder, Spencer Case, here interviews Roger Scruton. I have reproduced the whole piece, bolding those portions I consider most important. To my pleasure, I find myself in agreement with what Scruton maintains below, though he ought to have avoided the "ideological concentration camp" exaggeration. I reproduce the whole of the interview to…
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Saturday Night at the Library: What I’m Reading #1
Jan of Warsaw, Poland writes, Would you please start a series of posts akin to the "Saturday Night at the Oldies" except about books? A few books presented every week, each with a one sentence description, from as wide a thematic range as possible — fiction, history, philosophy, biography and others. I would profit from…
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Misattributed to Socrates
I am a foe of misquotation, misattribution, the retailing of unsourced quotations, the passing off of unchecked second-hand quotations, and sense-altering context suppression. Have I ever done any of these things? Probably. 'Suffering' as I do from cacoethes scribendi, it is a good bet that I have committed one or more of the above. But…
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Sertillanges on Reading
The erudite Sardonicus kindly sends this to supplement my earlier remarks on reading: We want to develop breadth of mind, to practice comparative study, to keep the horizon before us; these things cannot be done without much reading. But much and little are opposites only in the same domain. . . [M]uch is necessary in…
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Widely-Read or Well-Read?
This from a reader: Mortimer Adler, in How to Read a Book, pointed out that being widely-read does not mean one is well-read. I've enjoyed reading some of your old posts about reading and studying, so I wanted to know your opinion on this matter. Should I aim to read a lot of books? Or is it…
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Is Graduate School Really That Bad?
100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School is now at #79. Despite its unrelenting negativity, prospective applicants to graduate programs may find the site useful. I cannot criticize it for being negative since that is its implied purpose: to compile 100 reasons not to go. But there is something whiny and wimpy about it. Suppose you are…
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Why Read Good Books?
Another gem from the pen of Victor Davis Hanson, national treasure. And be sure to follow the internal hyperlink to his reminiscences of Hitchens. Related posts of mine: On Writing WellLeo Strauss on Reading and WritingA Method of Study
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Suggestions on How Best to Study
Just over the transom: Noting your desire to correct spelling, here are two that I spotted: "…gave an argment [sic] a while back (1 August 2010 to be precise) to the conclusion that there cannot, as a matter of metaphyscal necessity [sic]…" Holy moly! Thanks. I just corrected them, and then found three more. My…
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Serious Reading and Bed Reading
There is serious reading and there is bed reading. Serious reading is for stretching the mind and improving the soul. It cannot be well done in bed but requires the alertness and seriousness provided by desk, hard chair, note taking and coffee drinking. It is a pleasure, but one stiffened with an alloy of discipline.…
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Word of the Day: ‘Pot-Valiant’
If you think I have a large vocabulary, you are right. But despite my voracious reading I have never stumbled upon 'pot-valiant' until just now, in a piece by Mona Charen wherein I found the sentence, "And it's true that some Republicans, like Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist, have fetishized their opposition to taxes…
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Leo Strauss on Reading and Writing
Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing: It is a general observation that people write as they read. As a rule, careful writers are careful readers and vice versa. A careful writer wants to be read carefully. He cannot know what it means to be read carefully but by having done careful reading…
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Lanza del Vasto on Enchainment to Mere Means
Lanza del Vasto, Principles and Precepts of the Return to the Obvious (Schocken 1974, no translator listed), p. 93: The Pursuit of the Useful raises an endless staircase in front of men. Whoever climbs it with all his strength and all his thought can but come out of it dead, without even having perceived that…