Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
(You’ll never think of pond ice the same way again after you read Thoreau’s lengthy discussion of how its qualities change throughout the winter.)
Cal Newport • Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
This all reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut’s famous story about leaving the house to buy an envelope, and his wife’s objection: Oh, she says, well you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell
... See moreAnnie Dillard • Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (pdf).pdf
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.
Henry David Thoreau • Walden
All around them spreads a phantasmagoric, Ordovician fairy tale. It’s morning like the morning when life first came up on dry land.
Richard Powers • The Overstory: A Novel
Who wouldn’t want to live in Busytown, the setting of the iconic 1960s children’s books by the American illustrator Richard Scarry? His grocer cats and firefighting pigs are certainly busy; nobody in Busytown is idle—or if they are, they’re carefully hidden from view by the authorities, Pyongyang-style.
Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
