In preparation for an Autumn Semester of The New Cavalier Reading Society I’ve been lately rereading—over and over again—the 3 volumes of my Commonplace Books.
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At well over 800 authors on 700 separate subjects, they may with diffidence be said to contain one’s fair share of wisdom.
But at different times and periods in one’s life, there are certain quotations that poke one in the eye and tweak one by the nose throughout specific re-readings.
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Lately it has been this, from Robert Louis Stevenson:
“An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity. To have many of these is to be spiritually rich.”
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And then the ensuing thoughts of, “Of what value is an aspiration *late* in life? If one has found a kind of comfortable happiness, should (can!?) an aspiration go beyond that? And can an aspiration be a delusion, and in fact not a joy, but a folly? And if one has no material wealth, CAN spiritual riches give any pleasure at all?”
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But perhaps these are questions better left for that Autumn Semester...
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