This from chef Rick Stein’s Secret France.
In passing Stein remarks that in France, rather than asking “What do you do?”, people ask “What’s your métier?”—literally, what are you master of?
We should all aspire to be masters of our chosen profession.
I’m pretty sure it was episode 2: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b8sb .
The book’s here, but I suspect, it won’t help. Great recipes, though.
Image: BBC
The success of any year will be determined in large part by what you choose to ignore.
Wise words from Execupundit’s Michael Wade, one of the handful of pithy, insightful bloggers who start my day.
Photo by Romain Vignes on Unsplash
Stoicism for the modern world, death to the self-help book industry, and a healthy scepticism towards social media.
Happy: Why more or less everything is absolutely fine by Derren Brown is superb. It’s beautifully written, wonderfully observed, both philosophical and practical (which once upon a time were one and the same thing). Very thought-provoking.
I think I first heard of Happy from a Donald Robertson interview and it treads similar ground to How to Think Like A Roman Emperor. However, it does so in a completely different way.
I particularly enjoyed Chapter 5, A (Very) Brief History of Happiness.
Thoroughly recommended.
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
Epicurus (341 – 270 BC)
Image: Richard Mortel from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]
Bach’s music needs to be unlocked; its emotional content, when discovered, is somehow in and of itself, and uniquely musical. Much of it is deeply confessional. By contrast, Romantic music now seemed to create a broader emotional landscape: that of falling in love, spending a night on a bare mountain, suffering in turmoil or throwing oneself off a parapet. Instead of experiencing those things for ourselves, we are given music that stirs and excites the corresponding emotions within us. Thus the refrains of the Romantics are often more accessible, yielding their power more or less immediately. Those of us who prefer the earlier mode might even say this emotional mode became a mere substitute for experience, and that the unique, private experience of music was diminished.
Derren Brown, Happy (p152)
On a separate note, I love the above portrait, borrowed from DerrenBrown.co.uk. It’s so rich. And, I’m not at all jealous of the laddered library, nor of the impressive amp in the background. No, I’m not.
We way we process thoughts is reflected in our body language.
Here’s something I first learned about on a Nicholas Bate course, maybe 15 years ago. A useful (and visual) reminder…
Photo by Juan Rumimpunu on Unsplash
Each person acquires their own character, but their official roles are designated by chance. You should invite some to your table because they are deserving, others because they may come to deserve it.
Seneca (4 BC – AD 65), Moral Letters to Lucilius (47.15)
Make the best of today. Those who aim instead at tomorrow’s plaudits fail to remember that future generations will be nowise different from the contemporaries who so try their patience now, and nowise less mortal.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (8.44)
A man’s true delight is to do the things he was made for. He was made to show goodwill to his kind, to rise above the promptings of his senses, to distinguish appearances from realities, and to pursue the study of universal Nature and her works.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (8.26)
Everything – a horse, a vine – is created for some duty. This is nothing to wonder at: even the sun-god himself will tell you, ‘There is a work that I am here to do,’ and so will the other sky-dwellers. For what task, then, were you yourself created? For pleasure? Can such a thought be tolerated?
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (8.19)