Blogging the Bookshelf

Blogging my bookshelf – one book at a time

Blogging the Bookshelf header image 4

Entries Tagged as 'Learning'

“The Greek Way” – Edith Hamilton

February 13th, 2012 · No Comments · Philosophy, Uncategorized

The truth to reconcile these truths (Aeschylus) found in the experience of men, which the men of his generation must have realized far beyond others, that pain and error have their purpose and their use: they are steps of the ladder of knowledge: God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:···Suffering·Wisdom

Teachers – “An Artist of the Floating World” – Kazuo Ishiguro

October 11th, 2011 · No Comments · Art, Culture, Japan, Japanese, Literature

A teacher or mentor whom one admires greatly in early adulthood will leave his mark, and indeed, long after one has come to re-evaluate, perhaps even reject, the bulk of that man’s teachings, certain traits will tend to survive, like some shadow of that influence, to remain with one throughout one’s life… ..the way I [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:·····

Beatrix Potter – “Cultural Amnesia” – Clive James

October 4th, 2011 · No Comments · Parenting, Reading Related

Beatrix Potter got her poetry from prose: which is to say, from speech, concentrated. Written in an age when it was still assumed that children would not suffer brain damage from hearing a phrase they couldn’t immediately understand, the books are plentifully supplied with elevated verbal constructions. The bright child sees unfamiliar phrases going by [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:Children····

Greater Than Nature Will Allow -“Frankenstein” – Mary Shelley

May 6th, 2011 · No Comments · Culture

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.

[Read more →]

Tags:··Research