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Close to your heart

Jul 12, 2019 | you got mail

I've heard of people keeping letters, including under their pillow, but never one permanently about your person. This letter from the...

An awakened influence

Jul 12, 2019 | writing & writers

Charlotte Bronte describes the spirit of writing when it flows. This happens to me occasionally, and I've noticed you can't wait for it...

The magic of great stories

Jul 5, 2019 | writing & writers

Coming from a superb storyteller, this comment on the secret of the Great Stories is refreshing and insightful. It has long fascinated...

A poet’s eye view of the poet

Jun 21, 2019 | poetry mojo

I always liked Ezra Pound's definition of the poet as being the 'antenna of the race'. Here Wallace Stevens enlarges their role to an...

All the details of the tree

Jun 14, 2019 | writing & writers

A fine injunction to a writer, first to face truth and then to give unhidden all the details. Neither is easy. 'Face truth,...

Portrait of a writer

May 31, 2019 | writing & writers

Iris Origo (1902-88) was an English writer who grew up in Italy and married an Italian. Together they bought and renovated an estate in...

A quote to note

Drawing on thousands of sparkling, moving and inspiring quotations amassed during decades of attentive reading. To delight your mind and spirit and improve your presentations beyond belief.

No summer is long enough

Referring to the Arctic, where the summers are short and the winters long, this rueful statement made me think about our own longer...

A single moment, a lifelong memory

This spare and tender novel captures a simple gesture in a passing moment and how it haunts someone for life. These moments can change...

Frogs around a pond

I liked Socrates' image of the Mediterranean, that great big watery basin, as a pond around which we live like frogs. 'We live round a...

Of science and art

Someone spotted this on a wall at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), a bastion of cutting edge science, and therefore...

Metaphorically speaking

More marvelous metaphors on Mondays … Monday, metaphor day.

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Demons as microbes

I liked this analogy to help us grasp how demons were perceived in late antiquity, apparently more matter of factly than one might have...

Rising like a damp-stain

In addition to the infiltration of Christianity, seeping into Hellenic culture, as this historian memorably puts it, 'like a...

Hungry Buddha

A wonderful description of Boris Johnson in the recent BBC debate among candidates for the role of Prime Minister. When I read this, I...

Particles of human life

This week, glad to share fine metaphors both written by journalists. Here The Economist pays a suitably eloquent and moving tribute to...

Triologisms

Bringing you pithy, evocative imagery in the form of three-legged microcosms of meaning. Updated on Tuesdays … Tuesday, triologism day! You’ll never see this day of the week in the same way again.

Miracle-breeding imagination

What a wonderful concept, part of a lavish description of a man's character by Mark Twain. Worth mentioning that these vaunted...

Slow-drifting years

Something memorable fresh and sharp in the mind even after many 'slow-drifting years'. An unusual concept as for me, and many people I...

Hard-breathing horses

Caught up in the maelstrom of battle between the Greeks and Trojans, these horses have just seen their master massacred, and free of his...

Horn-curved cattle

Homer describes these cattle and some 3,000 years later, yesterday, I passed them grazing in a field in Switzerland as we drove to...

Gleam-footed horse

You can see the gleam of its hooves, as I once saw in a perfectly preened and prepared pedigree horse whose hooves had been polished...

Tussock-lined tract

What formerly passed for a lawn in our garden is now becoming a wild meadow, notwithstanding its random colonization by tough tussocks....

Words

Sharing words that sparkle, appeal, intrigue or otherwise grab me, including those in other languages. And adoring alliteration, new words will be added on Wednesdays… Wednesday, word day. See you back here then.