“Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and…
Colm Doherty: I just have this tremendous sense of time slipping away from me, Pádraic. And I think I need to spend the time I have left thinking and composing. Just trying not to listen to any more of the dull things that you have to say for yourself.Pádraic Súlleabhain: Are you dying?Colm Doherty: No,…
“The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have…
When illusion spin her netI’m never where I want to beAnd liberty she pirouetteWhen I think that I am freeWatched by empty silhouettesWho close their eyes but still can seeNo one taught them etiquetteI will show another meToday I don’t need a replacementI’ll tell them what the smile on my face meantMy heart going boom…
“What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what…
“Behind the issue of how we allocate time lurks the even more fundamental issue of what we want to get out of our lives.” – Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle In reading Koch’s book it struck me how profoundly influential he was in Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Work Week. Not a shock, really, since…
“We can park the van and walk to town Find the cheapest bottle of wine that we could find And talk about the road behind How getting lost is not a waste of time Le Bois d’Amour will take us home And in a moment we will sing as the forest sleeps” – Jack Johnson,…
In the dimmest of early morning light I watched a deer slowly work its way through the fallen branches, stones and muck out beyond the fence. White tail flickered and drew attention, just as a squirrel’s tail does, and I wondered at the similarities of these mammals who coexist in these woods. Each are seeking…
“Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead Every morning, so far, I’m alive. And now the crows break off from the rest of the darkness and burst up into the sky – as though all night they had…
“At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only – when…