Intimacy

When I discover an old copy of a book, it is the only one I find. Later I learn that mine is not the only one and become disillusioned. There is something romantic about thinking that a book has been lost forever - that it cannot live on except through you.

Luxuries and Necessities

The better you have it, the more you complain that you don't have it better.

Higher Education

"I don't need to be interesting - I already have a job."

Form and Content

The obsession with the distinction between form and content has been as much a hindrance as an aid to the progression of philosophy. We speak of form and content as if the whole world were composed of nothing but so many jugs of wine. But the content of a thing cannot so easily be emptied of its form. Like so many distinctions that are made, in both philosophy and our daily lives, the line dividing one thing from another is hazy at best, indefensible at worst. But worst of all, these matters are so rarely thought of as they truly are, that is to say, as useful yet imperfect analogies. We compare one thing to another, dissimilar to it, such that each may appear in the light of the other and thereby be seen anew. Parallels are discovered while differences are forgotten, for the one thing appears in the light of the other. To forget the differences between the present object considered and the analogue by which it is understood may be defensible, but to forget that the object is seen as such by cause of its analogue is most certainly not. The object and its analogue stand apart even as they dwell together.