From Walter Kaufmann’s Critique of Religion and Philosophy
‘Most translations give no adequate idea at all of Buddhist scriptures, and those in most anthologies are especially inadequate. The originals are so exceedingly long and repetitious that the translator or editor usually feels forced to omit most of the text, keeping the bare plot and at best […]
They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces,
And husband nature’s riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others, but stewards of their excellence.
The summer’s flower […]
Thanks to Saadullah Bashir, the complete text of Walter Kaufmann’s Without Guilt & Justice is now featured here. The book is an admirable triumph of the five cardinal virtues - courage, honesty, love, ambition, and humility - elaborated by the author. It has been out of print for the past several years and is reproduced […]
Perennial cornflower or mountain bluet is native to the mountains of southern Europe. However, thanks to its propensity to “escape” from gardens and naturalize, it can now be found as a non-native species throughout much of the rest of Europe and parts of North America. The Colorado State University’s Cooperative Extension has a tidy article […]
Alexander Nehamas, who teaches at Princeton, is the author of several philosophical works, including The Art of Living.
Beauty is the most discredited philosophical notion—so discredited that I could not even find an entry for it in the index of the many books in the philosophy of art I consulted in order to find it discredited. […]
“Every man, I daresay, has his own notion of what constitutes perfect peace and contentment, but all of those notions, despite the fundamental conflict of the sexes, revolve around women. As for me–and I hope I may be pardoned, at this late stage in my inquiry, for intruding my own personality–I reject the two commonest […]
Sandro Botticelli
period | Early Renaissance
date | circa 1470-80
Over the centuries, scholars and art historians have written extensively about Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera. And while there are many different interpretations of this magnificent painting, there is one version that is widely accepted - the work represents a mythological version of the coming of Spring. Even the title […]
It is a relief and a pleasure to have shifted our web pages to WordPress. I was finally satisfied with the way they all look and function after having modified this and that, and installing and upgrading this and that plug-in to Wordpress 1.5, only to discover that WordPress 2.0 is on the way.
It is […]
Credit: Marco Di Lorenzo et al. courtesy Aviation Week, Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Cornell, JPL, NASA;
Explanation: What is the geologic history of Mars? To help find out, the robot Spirit rover explored the terrain on the way up to the top of Husband Hill and took pictures along the way. Earth-bound team members later combined […]
“Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan can be described as an artiste who has had the maximum impact on the 20th Century Hindustani Classical Music scenario. Born in 1902 into a great musical lineage from Kasur in the Western Punjab, this great savant amalgamated the best of four traditions; his own Patiala - Kasur style, sculpturesque […]
“Over a period of 300 years, between 900 and 1200 AD, the Khmer empire produced some of the world’s most magnificent architectural masterpieces on the northern shore of the Tonle Sap, near the present town of Siem Reap. Most are concentrated in an area approximately 15 miles east to west and 5 miles north to […]
Cassatt is perhaps best-known for her paintings of mothers and children, works which also reflect a surprisingly modern sensibility. Traditional assumptions concerning childhood, child-rearing, and the place of children in society were facing challenges during the last part of the 19th century and women too were reconsidering and redefining their place in modern culture. Cassatt […]
Mr. Khan was born on Nov 25, 1916 in Madras. He had migrated to Pakistan on Oct 17, 1947. On July 29, 1931 he had purchased a tape recorder to tape his mother’s voice. Since then he had taped the voices of Roshan Aara Begum, Ustad Amaanat Ali Khan, Faiz Ahmed Faiz (all works), Akhtarul […]
“A shower fell in the night and now dark clouds drift across the sky, occasionally sprinkling a fine film of rain.
“I stand under an apple tree in blossom and I breathe. Not only the apple tree but the grass round it glistens with moisture; words cannot describe the sweet fragrance that pervades the air. I […]
Article I-What Education Is
“I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race. This process begins unconsciously almost at birth, and is continually shaping the individual’s powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, training his ideas, and arousing his feelings and emotions. Through this unconscious education […]
‘In order to understand the law of the equivalence of mass and energy, we must go back to two conservation or “balance” principles which, independent of each other, held a high place in pre-relativity physics. These were the principle of the conservation of energy and the principle of the conservation of mass. The first of […]
“According to legend, this city of abundant sunshine and cool sea breezes began its life as a small fishing village named Kolachi-jo-Kun and later, Kolachi-jo-Goth. An early reference to a place called “Krokola” (which is believed to be the site of present day Karachi) can also be got from one of Alexander the Great’s […]
Chaturpandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande is considered by many to be the father of modern Hindustani music. He was the most important Hindustani musicologist and composer of the 20th century, a true crusader and a renaissance man.
“Born into a cultured Maharastrian family in Balukeshwar, Bombay on December 31st, 1860, Bhatkhande acquired his sweet voice and initial […]
From Plato’s Symposium
Alcibiades’ Panegyric:
“And now, my boys, I shall praise Socrates in a figure which will appear to him to be a caricature, and yet I speak, not to make fun of him, but only for the truth’s sake. I say, that he is exactly like the busts of Silenus, which are set up […]
‘IV. He was very violent in expressing his haughty disdain of others. He said that the scholê (school) of Euclides was cholê (gall). And he used to call Plato’s diatribê (discussions) katatribê (disguise). It was also a saying of his that the Dionysian games were a great marvel to fools; and that the demagogues were […]
