The Art of Tetman Callis

“In individual experience immediacy is never fully enjoyed; satisfaction is a subsequent affair. Existence is ever-not-quite. We look to the past for the source of our enjoyment. That backward look, in fact, constitutes our enjoyment.” – David L. Hall, “Culture, History, and the Retrieval of the Past” (emphasis in original) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter […]

[Read more →]

“Were I outside time, able to dip into it here or there at will, I should have little trouble in retrieving a specific past moment. I am, however, inexorably constituted by time, for without memory I should have no means of having, of being, a self. Only by remembering my self may I remain a […]

[Read more →]

“It is the essence of fascism to have no single fixed form—an attenuated form of nationalism in its basic nature, it naturally takes on the colors and practices of each nation it infects. In Italy, it is bombastic and neoclassical in form; in Spain, Catholic and religious; in Germany, violent and romantic. It took forms […]

[Read more →]

“Cosmopolitanism is not a tribal trait; it is a virtue, as much as courage or honesty or compassion. Almost without exception, the periods of human civilization that we admire as we look back have been cosmopolitan in practice; even those, like the Bronze Age, that we imagine as monolithic and traditional turn out to be […]

[Read more →]

“You will not be able to find the boundaries of the soul even if you walk every path, so deep is its measure.” – Heraclitus (quoted by John Bussanich in “The Roots of Platonism and Vedanta”) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“Words fail us; they only encompass the most deceiving appearance of things, and bump into each other in multiple contradictions.” – Roland Omnès, Quantum Philosophy: Understanding and Interpreting Contemporary Science (trans. Arturo Sangalli) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“The campaigns of the Mongol armies were the last and the most destructive in the long lines of nomad invasions from the steppes. In just over fifty years they conquered half the known world and it was only their adherence to tribal traditions and the rivalry of their princes that denied them the rest of […]

[Read more →]

“Unlike the masters of other great empires, the Mongols contributed little to the civilizations that came after them. They adopted the cultures of their subjects and when their empire disintegrated the world forgot them, but they had altered the course of history and they had left it scarred. Russia was torn away from Europe, and […]

[Read more →]

“The positive benefits of music can be extended to infants before they are even born. For instance, from as early as the 24th week of an unborn infant’s life, their perceptual world is embedded within the sound of their mother’s heartbeat. The child is not grown in an acoustic vacuum, but rather in an environment […]

[Read more →]

“There is no man alive who is braver than Yessutai, no march can tire him and he feels neither hunger nor thirst; that is why he is unfit to command.” – Chingis Khan (quoted by James Chambers in The Devil’s Horsemen Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“No one owns anyone’s culture, and that to believe otherwise is to deprive us of the human fullness and richness we all deserve. To reconcile this insight with an equally compelling American truth—that racial injustice is our inheritance and our responsibility—is the challenge for every artist and critic, black or white.” – George Packer, “Race, […]

[Read more →]

“Girls, never trust a man under 40, because he’s still a boy.” – John Mellencamp (interviewed by Edna Gundersen in AARP The Magazine) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“To obtain the right training for virtue from youth up is difficult, unless one has been brought up under the right laws. To live a life of self-control and tenacity is not pleasant for most people, especially for the young. Therefore, their upbringing and pursuits must be regulated by laws; for once they have become […]

[Read more →]

“Some people believe that it is nature that makes men good, others that it is habit, and others again that it is teaching. Now, whatever goodness comes from nature is obviously not in our power, but is present in truly fortunate men as the result of some divine cause. Argument and teaching, I am afraid, […]

[Read more →]

“The natural tendency of most people is to be swayed not by a sense of shame but by fear, and to refrain from acting basely not because it is disgraceful, but because of the punishment it brings. Living under the sway of emotion, they pursue their own proper pleasures and the means by which they […]

[Read more →]

“Pleasure is considered to be deeply ingrained in the human race, and that is why in educating the young we use pleasure and pain as rudders with which to steer them straight. Moreover, to like and to dislike what one should is thought to be of greatest importance in developing excellence of character. For in […]

[Read more →]

“Ought we to make as many friends as possible? Or will the mot juste about hospitality, ‘not too many guests, nor yet none,’ also fit friendship in the sense that a person should neither be friendless nor have an excessive number of friends? The saying would seem to fit exactly those who become friends with […]

[Read more →]

“In a way, anger seems to listen to reason, but to hear wrong, like hasty servants, who run off before they have heard everything their master tells them, and fail to do what they were ordered, or like dogs, which bark as soon as there is a knock without waiting to see if the visitor […]

[Read more →]

“Justice is a sort of mean, not in the same way as the other virtues are, but in that it is realized in a median amount, while injustice belongs to the extremes.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 5, Ch. 5 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“Evil destroys even itself, and when it is present in its entirety it becomes unbearable.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 4, Ch. 5 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“Only a worthless man would endure utter disgrace for no good or reasonable purpose.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 3, Ch. 1 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“Both virtue and art are always concerned with what is harder, for success is better when it is hard to achieve.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, Ch. 3 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“In our transactions with other men it is by action that some become just and others unjust, and it is by acting in the face of danger and by developing the habit of feeling fear or cowardice that some become brave men and others cowards. The same applies to the appetites and feelings of anger: […]

[Read more →]

“He who cannot see the truth for himself, nor, hearing it from others, store it away in his mind, that man is utterly useless.” – Hesiod, Works and Days (trans. Richmond Lattimore) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“If you put lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig.” – Jeffrey J. Kroll, “Cross Is More Fun, but Direct Is What Wins” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“Fueled by self-love, the I is at its most garrulous inside its lonely garage.” – Will Schutt, “Storm” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“Marriage is the tomb of love.” – Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, Memoirs Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E. L. Doctorow Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]

“How do people come to know themselves? One way is by reading fiction. The profound act of empathy demanded by a novel, forcing the reader to suspend disbelief and embody a stranger’s skin, prompts reflection and self-questioning. But most people don’t read novels.” – Nathaniel Rich, “James Baldwin & the Fear of a Nation” Share […]

[Read more →]

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” – James Baldwin, “Stranger in the Village” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

[Read more →]