The American Scholar

Commonplace Book

An April Sunday brings the snow Making the blossom on the plum trees green, Not white. An hour or two, and it will go.

—Philip Larkin, “An April Sunday brings the snow,” 1948

Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating; and things will destroy themselves.

—Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, 1837

Wittgenstein declared that it did not much matter to him he ate, so long as it was always the . When a dish that looked especially appetizing was brought to the table, I sometimes exclaimed ‘Hot Ziggety!’— a slang phrase that I learned as a boy in Kansas. Wittgenstein picked up

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