CommonSensical
CommonSensical
…in which we offer timeless words from thinkers and artists new and old on the subject of earning one’s living while protecting one’s soul.
9. Four Complications of Property
E.M. Forster explores the question, “If you own things, what’s their effect on you?”
Property makes its owner feel that he ought to do something to it. Yet he isn’t sure what. A restlessness comes over him.
… (read this post)
8. In Defense of “Aimless” Learning
A.E. Housman on knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
The desire of knowledge does not need, nor could it possibly possess, any higher or more authentic sanction that the happiness which attends its gratification.
… (read this post)
7. What We Worship
A remarkable commencement speech by the late David Foster Wallace.
In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.
… (read this post)
6. Soul School
John Keats on individuality, hardship, and the human spirit.
Call the world, if you please, “The Vale of Soul-Making.” Then you find out the use of the world.
… (read this post)
5. Jack London on Upward Mobility
Where they were not alive with rottenness, quick with unclean life, there were merely the unburied dead — clean and noble, like well-preserved mummies, but not alive.
… (read this post)
4. Trust Thyself
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self Reliance.”
I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. … What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.
… (read this post)
3. Time for Everything
Charles Lamb on the peculiar nature of retirement after 36 years of drudgery.
From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me.
2. Eight Difficult, Outdated Ways to Excel
Nitobe Inazo’s Bushido: The Soul of Japan.
More than a century ago, President Teddy Roosevelt raved about a new English-language work by a Japanese author, and bought five dozen copies of the book to distribute to family and friends.
… (read this post)
1. Life Without Principle (or Interest)
Henry David Thoreau on the question: What shall it profit if a man gain the whole world but lose his soul?
To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse.
