READING AND WRITING

by lex
Posted: Sat – October 9, 2004 at 09:41 AM

While on the ship last month, I had some spare time between events and at night to read. Reading is a luxury I used to enjoy much more frequently than I have of late.

There are of course all sorts of time pressures in our daily lives, everything seems to happen so quickly these days. There seems to be very little space for contemplation and reflection. And reading literature at least, as opposed to email, ought to be a contemplative pleasure.

Where has the time gone? Sometimes I am subject to the gnawing concern that these “labor saving” devices we have built for ourselves have chained us instead to tyrants of “Better” and “Faster.”

Credo

"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me."

— John Paul Jones

"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature"

— George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

— Edmund Burke

"Μολὼν λαβέ"

— Leonidas

"Blogito Ergo Sum"

— Neptunus Lex