A Good Life

“ There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life sp... See more

why is it so hard to live a slow, ambitious life, with a deep enjoyment of small things fostered with an aspiration to achieve something bigger, better everyday - in the soft and stupid company of your dearest friends. it shouldn't be too much asking for it all, and having it at… Show more

An old friend of mine, a journalist, once said that paradise on earth was to work all day alone in anticipation of an evening in interesting company.

Like human happiness, teenage happiness does not flourish when everyone has the freedom to live just as they please. Where there is neither order nor necessity in life—no constraints, no inhibitions, no discomfort—life becomes both relaxing and boring, as American philosopher Allan Bloom notes. A soft imprisonment.

On finding your second wind:

“Sooner or later, however, a writer (or at least a writer of my type) finds himself at a crossroads: he has exhausted his initial experience of the world and the ways of expressing it and he must decide how to proceed from there.

 

He can, of course, seek ever more brilliant ways of saying the things he has already sa

... See more