The moderate overwhelm of a great bookshop is better than the infinite overwhelm of internet. — There is a wonderful word in the Japanese language — tsundoku. It translates as: The art of buying more books than you can read. It consists of two words — ‘tsumu’ which means ‘to pile up’ and ‘doku’ ‘to read’. You might think that it is similar in meaning to…

‘The best German book there is.’ ~ Nietzsche on Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe. Italy has Dante, England has Shakespeare, but Germany has — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The former two, however, dedicated their lives almost exclusively to writing, whereas Goethe was an inborn polymath. One can joke and say that…

“Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.” ― Jorge Luis Borges Great literature often precedes contemporary science. The imagination of great writers senses truths that scientists are yet to discover. The Argentinian writer Jorge Louis Borges was gifted precisely with this kind of oracular imagination. In 1942, one of…

How many figures from this famous fresco by Raphael you can name? In the centre of it, we can witness two great philosophers — Plato (on the left) and Aristotle (on the right)— talking to each other. Raphael modeled the figure of Plato after Leonardo Da Vinci from who he…

‘Enemies are of more use to the wise man than friends are to the fool.’ — ‘Even when explaining yourself’ — writes Baltasar Graciàn — ‘you should avoid complete frankness, just as you shouldn’t open yourself up to everyone in all your dealings.’ This piece of advice comes from a book called How to Use Your Enemies written by a 17th-century Spanish priest — Baltasar Graciàn. …

“Nothing will ever please, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must keep the knowledge to myself… No good thing is pleasant to possess without friends to share it.” ~ from Seneca’s Letters. Knowledge and wisdom lose all their wealth if you do not use them in daily life…

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” ~ Oscar Wilde I choose books that are (or aim to become) — timeless. Any book that I recommend needs first to pass what I call The Oscar Wilde Test…

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. …