Wish I'd Written It

I enjoy Wharton's prose the more for being sure that the impending weekend full of house guests at Darwin Manor will not be dull, though it may be loud:

That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way. Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement.
(House of Mirth, Edith Wharton)

But then, we don't represent the toast of the gilded age.

First Person

"I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience."
Thoreau, Walden

For whatever reason, Thoreau seemed like he might be a decent person to read while traveling -- perhaps an odd choice given that Walden is entirely about remaining in one very small locale. I recently heard a bit about Emerson and Thoreau and Transcendentalism in a set of American History lectures, and found feeling I should go read Thoreau so that my only association with him would no longer be the Calvin & Hobbes strip in which Calvin's parents are trying to decide how to simplify.

Pope John Paul on How to Live

"It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards "having" rather than "being," and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself."

--Pope John Paul II

(h/t to Happy Catholic)