Monday, October 17, 2011

A Case of Identity: Ernest Hemingway

The full article.

"I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house had shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The heroic little animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his jolly cheerful little body, but his brave little life was gone. It made me think how brave all these living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing but his own naked self to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully - and losing it - just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won't be worth as much as a little coyote." (The Letters of William James, ed. Henry James, Little, Brown and Co.: Boston 1926.) 
(The Letters of William James, ed. Henry James, Little, Brown and Co.:Boston 1926.)

Friday, October 7, 2011

So long.. Steve!


Do not therefore consider this life as an object of any moment. Look back on the immense gulf of time already past; and forwards, to that infinite duration yet to come, and you will find how trifling the difference is between a life of three days and of three ages.

Let us then employ properly this moment of time allotted us by fate, and leave the world contentedly; like a ripe olive dropping from its stalk, speaking well of the soil that produced it, and of the tree that bore it.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations