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  • The American Scholar

    Commonplace Book

    Jun 01, 2021 3 minutes

    The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent? All nature prompts and reproves us. How early in the year it begins to be late!

    —Henry David Thoreau, Journal, August 18, 1853

    I thought of Carthage, Baalbek, Jerusalem, Rome, Atlantis, Peking, Babylon, Nineveh … I hope for some sort of peace—but I fear that machines are ahead of morals by some centuries and when morals catch up perhaps there’ll be no reason for any of it.

    —Harry S. Truman, diary entry, July 1945

    In that game, or , I rarely got caught. I ran like only the sly, four-eyed can—to get there & to get away—to reach somewhere safe, where I never thought to stay.

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