Literature

Selected incipits.

Writers and books I keep returning to:

Writing

• How to rite rite
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk
• The King's English by Henry Fowler
• How to write with style by Kurt Vonnegut
• Mathematical writing by Donald Knuth et al.
• Hints for referees by Donald Knuth
• You and your research by Richard Hamming

Art

• Doré
• Winter, Poussin
• Isaac Newton, Blake
• A View of Toledo, El Greco
• Christ on the Cross, Velázquez
• Dante and Virgil in Hell, Bouguereau
• Triptych of Temptation of St Anthony, Bosch
• The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, Turner
• Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Turner
• The Cave of the Storm Nymphs, Poynter
• Giuditta che Decapita Oloferne, Gentileschi
• The Lady of Shalott, Waterhouse
• The Voyage of Life: Childhood, Cole
• The Voyage of Life: Youth, Cole
• The Voyage of Life: Manhood, Cole
• The Voyage of Life: Old Age, Cole

Quotes

No, I don’t like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work – no man does – but I like what is in the work, – the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself, not for others – what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.

Il faut travailler, sinon par goût, au moins par désespoir, puisque, tout bien vérifié, travailler est moins ennuyeux que s'amuser.

Une forte vie intérieure se suffit à elle-même, et ferait fondre vingt ans de banquise.

Plus je vieillis, plus j'ai d'avenir.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Conviction is a good motive, but a bad judge.

Death's gotta be easy, cos life is hard.

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that don't have brains enough to be honest.

It is better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one.

Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.

A hundred mad dogs of heresy have worried man from the beginning; but it was always the dog that died.

Blame no one. Expect nothing. Do something.

If we don’t discipline ourselves the world will do it for us.

Moral high ground is expensive real estate.

When a software engineer says it's impossible, that really just means it's cryptographically interesting.

Human nature makes us dependent on the opinion of others in a way that is completely out of proportion to its value.

Happiness is not mostly pleasure; it's mostly victories.

Hombre culto es aquel para quien nada carece de interés y casi todo de importancia.

Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way.

People, ideas, hardware; in that order.

Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.