Essay

If we stop and observe those around us, we can see many unhappy people as we go through our daily lives. They fill a variety of archetypes, but a common… read more

Greatness is more often the result of years of incremental, patient labor than it is the sudden phosphorescence of a single incident.  Gradually but persistently, like the drips of water… read more

Several generations ago, your great grandparents likely worked on a farm or in a dimly-lit urban factory after dropping out of school. They toiled doing menial labor for hours on… read more

Two months ago I accepted the invitation of my good friend Giannozzo Strozzi for a celebration of his forty-second birthday at his family’s modest yet comfortable villa outside Spoleto, in… read more

Everyone knows Niccolo Machiavelli’s (1469-1527) status as a seminal political theorist, but few are also aware that he was a first-rate playwright and satirist.  His play Mandragola (probably written around… read more

Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the more famous American philosophers of the 19th century. He strongly influenced Henry David Thoreau, whose Walden took the idea of self-reliance to the literal… read more

This short essay by Seneca, a Roman philosopher who lived during the 1st century, surprisingly has a lot of advice that remains applicable today. He main argument is that nature… read more