An interesting take on Shakespeare's influence in America.

A good read and a good Shakespeare resource.

People's stories are the most personal thing they have, and paying attention to those stories is just about the most important thing you can do for them.

"Dostoevsky is trying to show that humankind is constantly drawn to confront and acknowledge the ultimate mystery and irrationality of human life and of the human personality.

Allow me to indulge my fancy. You see, gentlemen, reason is unquestionably a fine thing, but reason is no more than reason, and it gives fulfillment only to man's reasoning capacity, while desires are a manifestation of the whole of life - I mean the whole of human life, both with its reason and with all its itches and scratches.

"Have you ever had the experience of finding in a book some vague idea that's already occurred to you, some obscure image that comes back to you from the depths of your mind, or a perfect expression of your most subtle feelings?"
"Yes, that's happened to me," she replied.

but they believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organise all humanity at once and make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process....That's why they so dislike the living process of life; they don't want a living soul! The living soul demands life, the soul won't obey the rules of mechanics, the soul is an object of suspicion, the soul is retrograde!

Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull, eventless times that have no duration whatsoever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it...

- But it's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life.
- What? says Alf
- Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred.

Franklin went on to catalog the most common conversational sins...the greatest being "talking overmuch...which never fails to excite resentment." He joked (about)watching two (people of this type) meet: "The vexation they both feel is visible in their looks and gestures; you shall see them gape and stare and interrupt one another at every turn, and watch with utmost impatience for a cough or pause, when they may crowd a word in edgeways."

"In teaching history, there should be extensive discussion of personalities who benefited mankind through independence of character and judgment." (Einstein)

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." (Einstein)

"To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself." (Einstein)

"It is important to foster individuality, for only the individual can produce new ideas." (Einstein)

"I don't deny it," answered Swann in some bewilderment. "The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance."

Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth.

But then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is a creation of the thoughts of other people. Even the simple act which we describe as "seeing someone we know" is to some extent an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of..

Very thorough. Very interesting.

I'm a myth fan. Enjoyed this read.