Rationality on George's Blog

Meditations (Marcus Aurelius Antonius the Roman Emperor)

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:03:00 -0500

Marcus Aurelius, one of the greatest emperors Rome ever produced, wrote a series of notes to himself. It is believed that these notes were never meant to be published but were part of his personal practice of self-improvement and philosophical reflection. Scattered with exhortations to not bend beneath the pressures of life, the reader is presented with a picture of life as something to be endured:

“Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds.”

Orthodoxy

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:31:48 -0500

Summary

Chesterton wrote this as a companion piece to his early work ‘Heretic’. He wishes to document his own views and how he got to them.

I did try to found a little heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

Chesterton reminds me of a Churchill or Benjamin Franklin in the way in which his ratio of memorable sentences per page asymptotically approaches 1. Every paragraph has gems that beg to be plastered on some living room wall in garish curly-q font: