From a written journal entry of three years ago, 12 March 1998:

This morning I finished the gentle book The Use of the Margin by Edward Howard Griggs (1907) — quite nice in its suggestions that we should pay attention to & effectively invest the little margins of time between other tasks, where we have freedom to choose. He counsels art, letters, science, etc. — but with conscious application of [their] uplifting emotions [to] action — kindness & courtesy, esp. to family & friends. He also suggests investing in time alone [(solitude)], and in focused study over years on a chosen topic. (This book was a reference in Hazlitt's Thinking as a Science.) Grigg's two great "open secrets" are, he says, concentration and variety in intellectual activity — focus on one thing intensely, & then when tired rest not by passive inactivity but rather by shifting the focus to something else.

Monday, March 12, 2001 at 20:25:26 (EST) = 2001-03-12

TopicThinking - TopicLiterature

(correlates: ReadingsOnThinkingAndLiving, WakeUpCall, TwoGreatSecrets, ...)