The American Scholar

Commonplace Book

Nothing is as important to our ability to survive as our ability to hurt.

-Haider Warraich, The Song of Our Scars, 2022

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

-William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1793

Little is understood, for example, of how the Vikings measured time. Their music and songs are a mystery. … It is unclear where women were believed to go when they died. Why was so much silver buried in the ground and never recovered? These and other questions

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