16 quotes
Those who can kill themselves do, and those who can’t, teach philosophy.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
Many are the consolations of literature, and not the least such solace occurs when an annoyingly virtuous hero succumbs to carnal temptation.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
Fair are the daughters of men, and fairest are those who read. Is there any creature more desirable than a damsel in intellectual distress?
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
My spirits rose: I could see the photon at the end of the tunnel.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
I shall never cease to marvel at the clarity of stars when viewed from midocean, each as sharp and bright as the laser pointer God uses when lecturing the angels on evolution.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
“Ah, yes, the spiritual realm.” In those days “spiritual” was my least favorite word. It still is.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
I wish more English teachers helped their students engage the classics at the level of raw delight, instead of putting them on the scent of symbols. A novel is not a cryptogram.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
Is there anything quite so ludicrous as two intellectuals grappling in a philosophy-department parking lot? Each of us wanted to pummel the other to a pulp, but neither knew how to go about it.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
The undergraduates lamented the high price of textbooks and the equally outrageous fact that they were expected to read them.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
Dexter Padula, a member of that ubiquitous academic breed, the professional graduate student, forever revising his dissertation while eyeing external reality with the anxious demeanor of a nursing infant struggling to imagine life beyond the tit.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
Neither Dexter nor I knew the first thing about running a small business. We were entrepreneurs the way Abbott and Costello were watercolorists. And so naturally it came to pass that Pieces of Mind was a hands-down, thumbs-up, flat-out success.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
As Jean-Paul Sartre reminds us, in the case of human beings this metaphysic is reversed: a person’s existence precedes his essence—he is a subject among objects. The danger, says Sartre, following Heidegger, is that he will “fall” into the world of objects, becoming ever after the prisoner of arbitrary strictures masquerading as universal principles.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
What I love about fiction is the way this form of expression allows an author to wrestle an idea to the ground, as opposed to the bumper-sticker dialectics that pass for political and philosophical discourse in most sectors of our culture. In the age of mass communication, we need the quiet, contemplative and often ambiguous medium of the novel more than ever.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
I know the God hypothesis has its partisans, but, oh, what a boring idea. Where did the universe come from? He did it. How do we account for rivers and rocks and ring-tailed lemurs? He made them. Ho-hum.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
“A golden age, Londa calls it. She hopes it will return.”
“Golden ages rarely return,” I said “especially if they never existed.”
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
I figure that, given our “thrownness,” as Heidegger called it, we should work hard to become as bewildered as possible by this strange state of affairs, asking the most impertinent and audacious questions we can imagine. To do otherwise—and instead hand over the mystery of it all to dubious cults of expertise—is to waste one’s life, I feel.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)