The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge Quotes

“Perhaps Aristotle’s most widely-read work is his esoteric treatise on aesthetics, the Poetics. According to his analysis of tragic poetry (a section on comedy was either lost or never completed), the theatrical audience experiences katharsis (“purgation”) of the heightened emotions of pity and fear as the tragic hero, a basically good but flawed aristocrat, is brought down by his own “error of judgment.”
― The New York Times, The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind

“Henry Adams, who was quite possibly the best informed American of his time, reminds us continually that his prodigious education amounted to no education at all. “Not that his ignorance troubled him! He knew enough to be ignorant. His course led him through oceans of ignorance; he had tumbled from one ocean into another till he had learned to swim.” To swim is to be in constant motion, taking the facts as we meet them, but always testing them against our own experience, until we arrive at something like the truth.”
― The New York Times, The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind