The Personal Weblog of Edward W. Farrell   
 
 
t h e   l a t e s t   b l o g   e n t r i e s
 
Enslaved By Freedom
Ernest Junger and the paradoxes of autonomy.
2024.07.05
 
 
Goddesses, Doormats, and Monogamy
On the promise or threat of sex

2024.04.10
 
 
Hamas Must Go
There's no excuse
2023.10.11
 
 
Speaking to Mountains: Shelley's "Mont Blanc"
What does the mountain say?
2023.10.07
 
 
For the Love of Guitars
a guitar is like a sweetheart--even when you fight it's a song
2023.04.07
 
 
Love At First Smite
When genius flowers from a failure to socialize
2022.09.11
 
 
Nina Kuzmicki: Two Poems
more on love as something lost
2022.09.10
 
 
Jordan Peterson on Ukraine
On the civil war in the West
2022.08.19
 
 
Love Poems: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Where love is something more often lost than found
2022.05.30
 
 
Populism on the Half Shell
The rocky road to populism
2022.05.14
 
 
States Without Legs: Slezkine's house of Government
Thoughts on the vacuums revolutions create
2020.02.10
 
 
 

 
All Blog Entries
A list of all blog entries, in reverse chronological order
 
 
 
t h e   l a t e s t   q u o t e
 
The Sterile Profession of Letters Giacomo Leopardi (1845)
 
No profession is so sterile as that of letters. But the world puts such a high value on deceit that with its help even letters becomes fruitful. Fraudulence is as it were the soul of social life. Given its effects on the human mind, no art or human faculty is really perfect without it. If you were to study the histories of two people--the one honest in all things, the other deceitful-you would always find the latter more fortunate than the former. The Honest man is in fact almost entirely barren of good fortune. Artifice lacking truth is valuable and effective, but truth lacking artifice is impotent. I don't think this is due to the wicked inclinations of our species, but rather because in everything he does man needs some illusion and glamour, since truth is always too flawed and impoverished. Illusion pleases and inspires him. He lives for the promise of something more, and better, than what the world can actually give. Even Nature is deceitful toward man: it makes life congenial and tolerable only through imagination and artifice.
 
 

 
All Quotes
A list of all quotes, in reverse chronological order
 
 
 
t h e   l a t e s t   p h o t o g r a p h y
 
Photo of the Month, May 2022
Toad Mountain Sunset
 
 
New Photo Additions
New photos of Bellingham, Washington and vicinity.
posted Friday, May 20, 2022
 
 
All site contents copyright 2024 Edward W. Farrell This page last updated on 2024-07-05