Sublime

Walker Percy says that good fiction tells us what we know but don’t quite know that we know.

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.”

Do I really believe that my work is crucial to the planet's survival? Of course not. But it's as important to me as catching that mouse is to the hawk circling outside my window. He's hungry. He needs a kill. So do I.

Mason teaches a religious tending of one’s own self. “Self-knowledge,” he says, “is that acquaintance with ourselves, which shows us what we are, and do, and ought to be, and do, in order to live comfortably and usefully here, and happily hereafter.” The means urged is self-examination, the purpose self-government and “self-fruition.” These books s

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.

I wish I could show him that what he is looking for is not in India but in himself, and obvious for all to see.

And then there are moments, maybe more toward middle or old age, when the leopard comes down out of the hills and just sits there in the middle of your doorframe. He stares at you, inescapably. He demands your justification. What good have you served? For what did you come? What sort of person have you become? There are no excuses at that moment. E

Men say, practically, Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought go about doing good. If I were to preach at all in this strain, I should say rather, Set about being good.

Knowing yourself and what you want to do is one of the most important things you’ll ever do in this life.