I consumed this book repeatedly when I was in college and then when starting at my first full-time job. I recently came across a wrinkled old index card containing one of my favorite quotes, which I’d typed using an old-fashioned typewriter:

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I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

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Looking back over many years, I can’t claim any great or brilliant success at doing this, and often I’m quite a failure at doing it, and yet this quote is still full of inspiration and hope. Maybe re-typing it today will help remind me to carefully and creatively attend to the details of today, and thereby make it a worthy one.

“We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.”

“The wonder is how they, how you and I, can live this slimy beastly life, eating and drinking.”

“If a man does not keep pace with his comnpanions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”