• Dante originally called The Divine Comedy "Vision"
• T.S. Eliot said people stay in Hell only because they cannot change
• The Latin word for "knowledge" sapientia, means the distinctions of the tongue, taste
• In the early 1300s, businesses establish themselves, taking the name "company" which literally means "with bread": companie
• Memory palaces. "The terrifying gargoyles of the cathedral at Chartres and the monstrous designs unfurling on manuscript pages like the Book of Kells are often considered evidence for the tortured psychology of medievals. In fact, these might just be examples of men following classical rules of medieval memory arts" - Frances Yates.
• Everything from Gothic cathedrals to Byzantine miniatures, Carlovingian ivories and Romanesque capitals tried to be an encyclopedic memory palace of images, intended to teach a populace that could not read and further persuade those who could. (p. 88)
• No creature naturally emits a good smell, writs Theophrastus, except for the panther
• "Sailing and transgressing: these are companion ideas since ancient ties. They suggest ambition is a kind of wandering, and something more: that life can be lived fully only by means of things that can be fatal to it....In a post-Freudian word we say the destiny we can will into being is not the destiny we want." (p. 117)
• "Existence is endurable only as an aesthetic fact." - Richard Rorty

And Hadrian's poem to his soul:

LINK | 9:12 PM | TB

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