John Myles White: Die Sudelbücher

When love is a feeling rather than an action, it is nearly worthless.

Pew Research has found that 79% of Americans believe in The Second Coming of Jesus. What worries me more is not that 4 out of 5 Americans believe in The Second Coming, but that 1 out of 5 believes it will happen in their lifetime. It seems inevitable that such a belief will grossly warp your priorities: you would have no reason at all to care about long term problems like global warming or antibiotic resistant bacteria, because you believe the world will end long before those concerns become substantial.

I wonder: does this 20% of the American people exhibit more delay discounting than American atheists?

We often find it easier to endure the evils we have sought to avoid than the good fortune that we have dreamt of.

Rereading Gómez Dávila’s “Escolios”, I am once again reminded that it is the greatest of the works of 20th Century Spanish language literature that have yet to be translated into English. Each time I return to these books, I find new sections that I adore:

En el auténtico humanismo se respira la presencia de una sensualidad discreta y familiar.

In authentic humanism, there breathes the presence of a discrete and familiar sensuality.

Sólo una cosa no es vana: la perfección sensual del instante.

One thing alone is not vain: the sensual perfection of an instant.

Una existencia feliz es tan ejemplar como una virtuosa.

A happy existence is as exemplary as a virtuous one.

Se suele olvidar que lo contrario de romántico no es clásico sino imbécil.

It is commonly forgotten that the opposite of Romantic is not classical, but idiotic.

Cuando la providencia nos concede el destino que anhelábamos, pronto descubrimos que aceptarlo requiere una resignación desolada.

When providence concedes to us the destiny that we wished for, we soon discover that a desolate resignation is required to accept it.

Dios es la substancia de lo que amamos.

God is the substance of that which we love.¹

If anyone could make me believe in God, it would be Gómez Dávila.

1. Nicolás Gómez Dávila : Escolios a un texto implícito : Tomo I↩

A work of art often remains important to us throughout life not because of any intrinsic worth, but simply because we came upon it precisely in the moment when it could be of the greatest value to us.

Surely we should give others second chances, but there is no reason why we should we give a second chance to someone who has never given us a first chance.

We are at our happiest when we agree with Leibniz, who thought that life’s suffering are as essential to its beauty as dissonance is essential to the beauty of music. But there is something coldly indifferent to the misfortunes of others in this sort of happiness.

It is often better to have thought through something for oneself and made a honest mistake than to have succeeded simply because you followed orders without thinking. Modern society, with its perpetually growing complexity, requires ever more of the latter, but the depth of our character and intellect depends almost exclusively on the former.

To know a man, you need only find out how he envisions the story of Stagger Lee.

It is a great injustice when we meet a woman only once and become infatuated with her: we have lost the chance to learn enough about her to be glad that we will never see her again.