Amit Majmudar

Pixels to pixels, dust to dust

Many ancient Greco-Roman philosophical schools did not establish some cosmic/metaphysical grounds for moral or virtuous behavior. They simply prescribed it as the *means to tranquility and happiness*—urging adherents to seek virtue out of self-interest.

Yeats speculates on the relationship between the Gita and the Gospels:

Here's @AmitMajmudar on the voraciousness, the capaciousness of the late great humanist George Steiner: "To read Steiner is, above all, to be reminded of everything you have ever read or meant to read."

I can't wait for the last volume in the trilogy. I love the covers of all these three books❤️

Schopenhauer also speculated that the New Testament is so fundamentally different from the Old, namely in its anti-worldliness and moral message, that it had to have roots in Eastern philosophy

so much of what Yeats laments about the Irish of his day & high literature’s inability to quicken their national life & identity reminds me of the contemporary Hindus

This is the novelist George Moore, painted by Manet. Sought this out because I’m reading Yeats’s autobiographical prose and he absolutely hated this guy

Christopher Nolan initially wanted to film DUNKIRK without a screenplay, but his wife Emma Thomas convinced him otherwise. “I had gone to Emma [Thomas] and said, ‘I think I can make this film without a screenplay.’ She immediately shot me down, saying, ‘You are being an idiot.’…

𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗦𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗟𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗔𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀!! (𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲: 𝗔𝘂𝗴. 𝟭) bit.ly/4d2Hb9r

Dharmic Totem Pole

Reading religious texts from centuries ago and comparing them to present-day examples, one thing is consistent across all religions, east and west: there has been a drastic de-emphasis of demons or the devil. Almost as if belief in them have vanished or gone completely abstract.

Ancient early Christian monastic discussions—rendered accessible through excerpts and a very chatty translation

What a sestet!

Incredible passage. Paul Veyne on how Christianity borrowed its ideas of conversion and heresy from the ancient pagan sects - but merged those ideas with a new, “imperialistic” universalism. Familiar + new. psychological basis of why late antiquity turned out the way it did

Found my tomb marker from a former incarnation

Plenty of novels about poetry out there, but here’s a poem about a novel—a Great American Novel, edited down by contemporary publishing culture into “literary fiction”…. Many thanks to @StevenEKnepper at @newversereview

All’s fair in love and war—and poetry…. Here’s a new warlike love sonnet in @newversereview with thanks as ever to the keen-eyed @StevenEKnepper