Friday, September 19, 2008

Two Dancing in Laws

1.

"[We] are doomed, by the fact that we are practical beings with very limited tasks to attend to, and special ideas to look after, to be absolutely blind and insensible to the inner feelings, and the whole inner significance of lives that are different from our own. Our opinion of the worth of such lives is absolutely wide of the mark, and unfit to be counted at all."

2.

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day."

2 comments:

Ahab Cloud said...

William James in Richardson, p. 381

David Foster Wallace, Commencement Speech at Kenyon College

yogacephalus said...

Inlaws, did you say?

I like the idea of these two dudes being the parents of the woman you've been lucky enough (or thoughtful enough) to marry.

Since you were the second person to mention the Commencement Speech to me tonight, I googled and read it. To which I say: damn.

Can you imagine how treated and shaken the Kenyon graduating class of '05 must've felt?