“I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva’s tower...I live still a collegiate student...and lead a monastic life, ipse mihi theatrum [sufficient entertainment to myself], sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world...aulae vanitatem, fori ambitionem, ridere mecum soleo [I laugh to myself at the vanities of the court, the intrigues of public life], I laugh at all.”
― The Anatomy of Melancholy
― The Anatomy of Melancholy
“A knife is neither true nor false, but anyone impaled on its blade is in error.”
― Mount Analogue
― Mount Analogue
“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“God cheats men into living on by hiding how blessed it is to die.”
― De bello civili libri X (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana)
― De bello civili libri X (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana)
“O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries. A whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can. A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we have done and yet may do. An introcosm that is more myself than anything I can find in a mirror. This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is everything, and yet is nothing at all - what is it?”
― The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
― The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Derek’s 2025 Year in Books
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