Live while you are alive
“If you want a demonstration of the accelerating infantilism of contemporary culture, look at Lego. Its origins lie deep in the history of European pedagogy, co-mingled with the Scandinavian design ethic. The bricks [were designed] to encourage intelligent decisions about structures, stimulating a child’s imagination. It was the ultimate open-ended system, with infinite potential for …
Rudyard Kipling argued in “Stalky & Co” that much of the value of British public-schools (private boarding school) experience lies in learning to oppose the dictates of routine, the cult of athleticism and the public parading of patriotic sentiment. Probably some of the most unpopular sentiments expressed in a book, guaranteed to cause fury today …
“Human beings should aspire to pleasure and happiness in this world, avoiding rude, vulgar people, cruelty, warfare, those with no empathy or care for others, and those striving for recognition and power”. (Michel de Montaigne (1533—1592)) In one sentence Montaigne has summed up some of the main thoughts and attitudes of Epicurus.
Milton said that “a meet and happy conversation is the chief and noblest end of marriage,” by which he meant that physical love is all well and good but true marriage is a meeting of the minds. He knew whereof he spoke because after he married his attractive young wife he discovered that she was …
Emma Brown in the Washington Post (October 19 th) reports on the increasing problem of “helicopter parents” who are so anxious to see their gifted children succeed that they are on the phone, sometimes several times a day, advising their kids at university. “They want to help them by shepherding them from milestone to milestone, …
