Sublime

A writer could blast out her opinions, but writers are at their best not when they tell people what to think but when they provide a context within which others can think.

“The shape of our knowledge becomes the shape of our living; the relation of the knower to the known becomes the relation of the living self to the larger world.” Palmer is saying that the way we attend to others determines the kind of person we become. If we see people generously, we will become generous, or if we view them coldly, we will become

Our social skills are currently inadequate to the pluralistic societies we are living in.

In something he calls the “theory of maximum taste,” New York Times columnist David Brooks says that each person’s mind is defined by its upper limit—the best content that it habitually consumes and is capable of consuming.