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What’s a Dog For: A Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Art of Presence. By Maria Popova It must be the season of the dog, from the recent treasure chest that is The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs (one of the the best art books of 2012) to the history of rabies to Fiona Apple’s stirring handwritten letter about her dying dog.

What’s a Dog For: A Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Art of Presence

But what is it about dogs, exactly, that has us so profoundly transfixed? That’s exactly what former New York magazine executive editor John Homans explores in What’s a Dog For? : The Surprising History, Science, Philosophy, and Politics of Man’s Best Friend (public library) — a remarkable chronicle of the domestic dog’s journey across thousands of years and straight into our hearts, written with equal parts tenderness and scientific rigor.

For days the good old bitch had been dying, her back pinched down to the spine and arched to ease the pain, her kidneys dry, her muzzle white. 51 Of The Most Beautiful Sentences In Literature. Heidegger in the Kitchen: What a Shrimp Can Teach Us About the Meaning of Life. Immortal Beloved: Beethoven’s Passionate Love Letters. By Maria Popova A student of both Mozart and Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) endures as one of the most influential and beloved composers of all time.

Immortal Beloved: Beethoven’s Passionate Love Letters

Whenever I find myself with a sunken heart, I promptly put his Ninth Symphony on repeat. It’s only befitting that a man of such extraordinary capacity to elevate the soul with beauty should be the author of some of the most breathtaking love letters of all time. Beethoven never married, but in his early forties he feel deeply in love with a mysterious woman who remains known as “immortal beloved” — the eternally enchanting term of endearment by which the great composer addressed her in his letters. Her true identity has spurred entire books, but historians currently believe she was Antonie Brentano — a Viennese aristocrat married to a Frankfurt businessman. Thoreau on How to Use Civil Disobedience to Advance Justice.

“Truth always rests with the minority,” the great Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote in his diary in 1846 as he contemplated the individual vs. the crowd and why we conform, “because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion.”

Thoreau on How to Use Civil Disobedience to Advance Justice

Around the same time, across the Atlantic, 29-year-old Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817–May 6, 1862) was beginning to contend with the subject of minority rights and civil justice after the horrors of the Mexican-American War compounded the outrage at slavery that had been seething in him for years.

Having recently benefited from trailblazing feminist Margaret Fuller’s conscientious mentorship, the young writer set about committing his outrage to words in what became Resistance to Civil Government, better known as Civil Disobedience (free ebook | public library).

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The Fountainhead. The New York trilogy. 1984. Les îles. Di sản của mất mát. Anh Thuan Doan. Coin locker babies. To Read Next. - " Deviens ce que tu es " chez les philosophes : Pindare, Epicure, Socrate, Kant, Pascal, Nietzsche - - Le blog de Kasimir. "Deviens-ce que tu es.

- " Deviens ce que tu es " chez les philosophes : Pindare, Epicure, Socrate, Kant, Pascal, Nietzsche - - Le blog de Kasimir

" Nous devons cette phrase à Pindare, un poète lyrique grec qui vivait il y a 2.500 ans. La citation exacte est : "Deviens-ce que tu es, quand tu l'auras appris. " Cette phrase se trouve dans les "Pythiques". C'est une exhortation faite par lui à Hiéros Premier, tyran de Syracuse. Cette idée est partagée par Epicure pour qui le premier des devoirs est d'opérer un changement en soi même. Elle sera aussi celle de Socrate, qui insiste sur la seconde moitié de la phrase de Pindare : " ...quand tu l'auras appris. " Aussi fera-t-il sa devise (**) de cette autre phrase : " Connais-toi toi même" phrase qui était gravée au fronton du temple de Delphes.

Cette phrase de Pindare est une " aporie" : elle contient un paradoxe. Comment peut-on devenir ce que l'on est déjà ? De ce fait elle ressemble un peu aux koans des Bouddhistes Zen (tradition Renzaï) qui par leur apparence illogique pousse à une réflexion qui ne peut aboutir et favoriserait de ce fait la survenue du Satori. Pour le plaisir je mais.

Nietzsche

Platon. Philosophie. Phylo.sophia. The Goal. Books are changing. World's coolest bookstores. Stunning El Ateneo bookstore in Buenos Aires was once a theater.

World's coolest bookstores

The theater boxes have been turned into reading spaces. Paris Left Bank fixture Shakespeare and Company hosts writers-in-residence and awards its own literary prize to an aspiring writer every few years. The stylish Last Bookstore in Los Angeles served as the backdrop for a fashion shoot in a recent issue of "Esquire. " Built in 1906 and originally designed as a bookstore, the Livraria Lello in Porto, Portugal, features neo-Gothic architectural flair. Luxury publisher Assouline's newest opening is in an 18th-century palazzo in Venice. Speed Reading. Des ouvertures de livres qui m'ont marqués.