Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
By lingering and listening, we witnessed a moment of beauty.
Priya Parker • The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
Bernard Berenson wrote to Isabella early in their friendship about the work of Walter Pater, the critic and novelist who made him feel, as he later said, “keenly alive.” While a student at Harvard he’d often read Pater’s masterpiece The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry late into the night, absorbing the critic’s argument that art, as Berenson
... See moreNatalie Dykstra • Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner
I pay a lot of attention to place in my writing, so when I arrive in a new town I try to do what Lawrence Durrell recommended in his essay “Spirit of Place,” which is to get still as a needle, as he puts it. [“It is a pity indeed to travel and not get this essential sense of landscape values. You do not need a sixth sense for it. It is there if you
... See moreRobert Boynton • The New New Journalism
A world which increasingly consists of destinations without journeys between them, a world which values only “getting somewhere” as fast as possible, becomes a world without substance. One can get anywhere and everywhere, and yet the more this is possible, the less is anywhere and everywhere worth getting to. For points of arrival are too abstract,
... See moreAlan W. Watts • The Way of Zen
The Art of Looking: Eleven Ways of Viewing the Multiple Realities of Our Everyday Wonderland
Maria Popovathemarginalian.org
It’s a path defined by resilience and generosity. It’s outward focused, but not dependent on reassurance or applause. Creativity doesn’t repeat itself; it can’t. But the creative journey still follows a pattern. It’s a practice of growth and connection, of service and daring. It’s also a practice of selflessness and ego in an endless dance. The pra
... See moreSeth Godin • The Practice
his 1841 essay “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.”[24]
Arthur C. Brooks • From Strength to Strength
Finding the universal in the personal, and the personal in the universal, is not only the secret to art and leadership and even entrepreneurship, it is the secret to centering oneself. It both turns down the volume of noise in the world and tunes one in to the quiet wavelength of wisdom that sages and philosophers have long been on.