Essayism
Here are my sticky notes from Essayism by Brian Dillon.
A quote from Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy:
a great Book is a great mischief -- Robert Burton
A quote from Montaigne:
And if I play the fool, it is at my own expense and without harm to anyone. For it is a folly that will die with me, and will have no consequences.
On time:
It sometimes feels like I'm trying to fill the time, my time, with as many small tasks as possible, so that the time will seem to have gone slower. Isn't that what's supposed to happen? It's one of the things meant by a full life: a life filled with many diverse events and pusuits, many competing versions of oneself.
On writing style:
'well-written' ... means quite oddly written, but subtly so.
On being fat and old and a procrastinator:
Approaching forty, heaving his well-lunched frame into a new decade, moving already with the anonymous waddle of mid-life, [Cyril] Connolly is convinced that if he can just lose half a stone, the rest -- his masterpiece -- will follow.
A quote from E. M. Cioran:
Is there a better sign of 'civilisation' than laconism?
An aphorism from Georg Lichtenberg:
Let him who has two pairs of trousers turn one of them into cash and buy this book
On wit:
Wit is the art of bringing unlikely things or ideas together, in such a way that the scandal or shock of their proximity arrives alongside a conviction that they have always belonged together.
