Minutes of a Monday #8

Brain Food

“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure the search would never have begun.

We are mistaken when we compare war with "normal life". Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies.

Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now and would not wait for the suitable moment that never come.”

CS Lewis, Learning in War-time, 1939.

Soul Food

"It’s not a smile, it’s a lid on a scream" Julie Goodyear

Rare Air

“Anytime you stay mired in a losing endeavour, that is when you are slowing your progress. Anytime you stick to something when there are better opportunities out there, that is when you are slowing your progress. Contrary to popular belief, quitting will get you to where you want to go faster.”

Former professional poker player and author Annie Duke.

Appendix

“I read the book fairly carefully. If it’s a bad book, I skim like hell, but if it’s a good book, I dig, and I read carefully, and as I’m reading it, I make little notes in the margins to come back to this section. If it’s a great book, practically every paragraph is marked up, but I try not to do that. And then I go through the whole book, and then later, maybe a couple of weeks later, I go back to the book and put it onto note cards. So I start from the beginning on the pages where I’ve made little notes, and I create themes.”

Robert Greene talking to Shane Parrish on how we remembers what he reads (from 2.20)

LOL

Roy Keane gets serenaded by the Old Trafford faithful almost 20 years after he played his last game there.

AOB

Still not had a chance to catch my series #honesty? You can watch all episodes stitched together here.