The Art of Tetman Callis

“My father passed away and this is what I found myself remembering—not the things that were, but the things that were not: the places not visited, the words not said, the stories not shared.” – Olga Grushin, “Portrait of My Father” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“People do not obey, unless rulers know how to command; obedience is a lesson taught by commanders. A true leader himself creates the obedience of his own followers; as it is the last attainment in the art of riding to make a horse gentle and tractable, so is it of the science of government, to […]

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“A ruler’s first end is to maintain his office, which is done no less by avoiding what is unfit than by observing what is suitable. Whoever is either too remiss or too strict is no more a king or a governor, but either a demagogue or a despot, and so becomes either odious or contemptible […]

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“No one can hurt you the way a mother can. No one can love you the way a mother can.” – Kira Madden, “The Greeter” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“What ultimately lets us move on is not acceptance but boredom.” – Mary South, “The Promised Hostel” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“It is the general feeling of all who have occasion for wicked men’s service, as people have for the poison of venomous beasts; they are glad of them while they are of use, and abhor their baseness when it is over.” – “Romulus,” Plutarch’s Lives (trans. A. H. Clough) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin […]

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“If life is occasionally interesting in anecdote, it’s not in the actual living.” – Mary South, “Architecture for Monsters” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“That age produced a sort of men, in force of hand, and swiftness of foot, and strength of body, excelling the ordinary rate, and wholly incapable of fatigue; making use, however, of these gifts of nature to no good or profitable purpose for mankind, but rejoicing and priding themselves in insolence, and taking the benefit […]

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“In order to be, one must not only be to one’s self: it is absolutely imperative that one be for others. One must have a way of basing one’s being on the certainty that others know one is there.” – Paul Bowles, “If I Should Open My Mouth” (emphasis in original) Share this… Facebook Pinterest […]

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“Why were machines ever invented? And what is this strange calm confidence that mankind has placed in these senseless toys it has managed to put together?” – Paul Bowles, “If I Should Open My Mouth” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The Keiths are Keiths because they are not particularly handsome, not particularly intelligent, not particularly kind. A Keith would never train to compete in professional sports or practice an instrument until he became a maestro. Neither would a Keith jump in front of a loaded gun, but he would help you gather the contents of […]

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“This letter will, to you, be as one from the dead. The writer will be in the grave before you can weigh its counsels. Your affectionate and excellent father has requested that I would address to you something which might possibly have a favorable influence on the course of life you have to run, and […]

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“According to Aristotle, the Pythagoreans held that the elements of number were the elements of things, and, therefore, that things were numbers. To us, accustomed as we are from childhood to the multiplication table, such an assertion seems simply meaningless. We are so familiar with the idea of counting without counting anything, that it is […]

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“Can one generation bind another, and all others, in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter, unendowed with will. The dead are not even things. The particles of matter which […]

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“Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding, and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties, which may make anything mean everything or nothing.” – Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to Justice William Johnson,” June 12, 1823 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter […]

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“And the father lifts up his own son in a changed form and slays him with a prayer. Infatuated fool! And they are dragged along begging mercy from the madman, while he, deaf to their cries, slaughters them in his halls and gets ready the evil feast.” – Empedokles, Purifications (from John Burnet, Early Greek […]

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“A great obstacle to good education is the inordinate passion prevalent for novels, and the time lost in that reading which should be instructively employed. When this poison infects the mind, it destroys its tone and revolts it against wholesome reading. Reason and fact, plain and unadorned, are rejected. Nothing can engage attention unless dressed […]

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“Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government.” – Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to Lafayette,” May 14, 1817 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.” – Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to P. S. Dupont de Nemours,” April 24, 1816 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“I knew General Washington intimately and thoroughly; and were I called on to delineate his character, it should be in terms like these. His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as […]

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“Material prosperity is necessary as a foundation for the highest intellectual effort.” – John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.” – Thomas Jefferson, […]

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“Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.” – Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to Wilson Cary Nicholas,” September 7, 1803 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“It behoves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. It behoves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering […]

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“The short story is the most purely artistic form; it expresses the ultimate meaning of all artistic creation as mood, as the very sense and content of the creative process, but it is rendered abstract for that very reason. It sees absurdity in all its undisguised and unadorned nakedness, and the exorcising power of this […]

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“What is meaningless and tragic in the world has not grown larger since the beginning of time; it is only that the songs of comfort ring out more loudly or are more muffled.” – Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel (trans. Anna Bostock) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the legant arts, but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere, and the less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue & freedom, would be my choice.” – Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to Dr. Benjamin […]

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“The whole body of the nation is the sovereign legislative, judiciary and executive power for itself. The inconvenience of meeting to exercise these powers in person, and their inaptitude to exercise them, induce them to appoint special organs to declare their legislative will, to judge & to execute it. It is the will of the […]

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“I have seen enough of political honors to know they are but splendid torments: and however one might be disposed to render services on which any of their fellow citizens should set a value; yet when as many would deprecate them as a public calamity, one may well entertain a modest doubt of their real […]

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“Political dissension is doubtless a less evil than the lethargy of despotism, but still it is a great evil, and it would be as worthy the efforts of the patriot as of the philosopher, to exclude it’s influence, if possible, from social life. The good are rare enough at best. There is no reason to […]

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