For Mother’s Day, timeless letters of motherly advice from Maya Angelou and other remarkable women.
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Respond esthetically to all sounds, from the hum of the refrigerator motor or the paddling of oars on a lake, to the tones of a cello or muted trumpet.
How to Listen to Music – a wonderful vintage guide to the 7 essential skills of listening.
The real value of a real education … has almost nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with simple awareness.
Raymond Chandler on writing, with an admonition to define your own success and not fall for prestige alone.
The acquirements which I hope you will make under the tutors I have provided for you will render you more worthy of my love; and if they cannot increase it, they will prevent its diminution…. I have placed my happiness on seeing you good and accomplished, and no distress which this world can now bring on me could equal that of your disappointing my hopes. If you love me then, strive to be good under every situation and to all living creatures, and to acquire those accomplishments which I have put in your power, and which will go far towards ensuring you the warmest love of your affectionate father.
In this 1783 letter, Thomas Jefferson lays on his 11-year-old daughter the weight of parental pressure that deems the missive a far cry from history’s best letters of fatherly advice.
The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.
Ira Glass on the secret of success in creative work
What you read is important, but not all important. How you read is the main consideration. For if you know how to read, there’s a world of education even in the newspapers, the magazines, on a single billboard or a stray advertising dodger.
Th secret of good reading is this: read critically!
Timeless wisdom from 75+ years ago: How to acquire knowledge.
Write! Writing, to knowledge, is a certified check.
14 ways to acquire knowledge – a timeless guide from 1936
Cheerfulness, unaffected cheerfulness, a sincere desire to please and be pleased, unchecked by any efforts to shine, are the qualities you must bring with you into society, if you wish to succeed in conversation. … a light and airy equanimity of temper,—that spirit which never rises to boisterousness, and never sinks to immovable dullness; that moves gracefully from “grave to gay, from serious to serene,” and by mere manner gives proof of a feeling heart and generous mind.
The art of conversation, 1866
Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.
Walter Benjamin on writing, adding to our ongoing archive of wisdom on the written word.
If you are really a wit, remember that in conversation its true office consists more in finding it in others, than showing off a great deal of it yourself. He who goes out of your company pleased with himself is sure to be pleased with you.
The Art of Conversation, 1866.
Nothing is more generally exploded than the folly of talking too much; yet I rarely remember to have seen five people together, where some one among them hath not been predominant in that kind, to the great constraint and disgust of all the rest. But among such as deal in multitudes of words, none are comparable to the sober, deliberate talker, who proceedeth with much thought and caution, maketh his preface, brancheth out into several digressions, findeth a hint that putteth him in mind of another story, which he promises to tell you when this is done, cometh back regularly to his subject, cannot readily call to mind some person’s name, holdeth his head, complaineth of his memory; the whole company all this while in suspense; at last says, it is no matter, and so goes on. And to crown the business, it perhaps proveth at last a story the company has heard fifty times before, or at best some insipid adventure of the relater.
Jonathan Swift admonishes against talking too much in a meditation on the art of conversation.
In disputes upon moral or scientific points, ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.
The art of conversation, 1866
