Sublime

Tranquility is the new luxury of our society.

People like him show that a deeper intimacy with nature is possible and that this intimacy does not have to rely on the obliterative arrogance of Western culture.

Or do such Sisyphean philosophies—that “the road is life”—turn out to be bourgeois luxuries indulged by those safe enough to pretend this is all there is? Does the hunger and hope of the migrant show us something more fundamentally human? Maybe our craving for rest, refuge, arrival, home is a hunger that can’t be edited—the heart an obstinate palim

This is the quiet art of living well. It does not demand that we abandon the world, but that we engage with it more mindfully. It asks that we slow down, that we look more closely, that we listen more carefully. For in doing so, we discover that much of what we seek—clarity, peace, even strength—was always within reach. It was simply waiting for us

But I did learn from Leonardo how a desire to marvel about the world that we encounter each day can make each moment of our lives richer

Expensive hotel rooms and bouquets of flowers were no substitute for watching the stars blink on and the sun and moon rise. Kind people in book lines did not keep me from missing my friends. To feel truly alive, I needed the sights, sounds, and smells of home.

By lingering and listening, we witnessed a moment of beauty.

For while it can be many things, serious reading is above all an agency of self-making.

‘Try to be one of the people upon whom nothing is lost!’