An inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.
~ Walter Bagehot
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Author Archives: Jasper John MacKay
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Eras are conveniences, particularly for those who never experienced them. We carve history from totalities beyond our grasp. Bolt labels on the result. Handles. Then speak of the handles as though they were things in themselves.
~ William Gibson
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The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
― Walter Benjamin
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Most problems do not get solved. They get superseded by other concerns.
~ Thomas Sowell
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Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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I knew it wasn’t too important, but it made me sad anyway.
~ J.D. Salinger
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Every trouble in life is a joke compared to madness.
~ Walter Bagehot
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What people take for relentless minimalism is a side effect of too much exposure to the reactor-cores of fashion.
~ William Gibson
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Let me learn only everything that others cannot teach me, that which only life would be capable of marking deeply in my skin!
~ Salvador Dali
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We improve ourselves by victory over our self. There must be contests, and you must win.
~ Edward Gibbon
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