a shandean commonplace book

Look, I really don’t want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you’re alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. Mel Brooks

It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently and honorably and justly, and also without living courageously and temperately and magnanimously, and without making friends, and without being philanthropic. disciple of Epicurus quoted in New Yorker

It seems to me that life in general is . . . one universal act of solitude. Daniel Defoe