Quote of the Day (Matt Emerzian, on Feeling Better About Yourself)

"If you want to feel better about yourself and your life, stop focusing on yourself. It is so simple but so hard for us to understand."— Matt Emerzian, founder and Chief Inspiration Officer of the not-for-profit organization Every Monday Matters, quoted in “Points to Ponder,” Reader’s Digest, January 2014

Quote of the Day (Armen Sarkissian, on Learning and Living)

“Those people who know how to listen are also people who learn. The moment you stop learning, you die. Age is not the number of years that you have been living. Age is the condition of your soul.”—Former physicist and President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian, quoted in “Lunch(es) With the FT Armen Sarkissian: ‘The Moment You Stop Learning, You Die,’” The Financial Times, June 15-16, 2019

The image accompanying this post—the official portrait of Armen Sarkissian when he was President of Armenia—was taken June 5, 2018, and made available by the Press Service of the President of the Republic of Armenia.

Quote of the Day (Joseph Epstein, on Self-Improvement and Encyclopedias)

“Self-improvement is at the heart of the encyclopedic enterprise. People certified with degrees from what the world considers the best universities and colleges sometimes forget that we are all autodidacts, on our own in the endless attempt to patch over the extraordinary gaps in our knowledge. Doing so in an efficient way is the promise held out by an encyclopedia, which claims to provide all the world's pertinent knowledge, right there in 24, 29, 32 volumes, usually with a bookcase thrown in at no extra charge.” —American essayist and editor Joseph Epstein, “Wisdom on the Installment Plan,” Wall Street Journal, June 18-19, 2016

As a youngster, my “self-improvement,” such as it was, came courtesy of a more modest encyclopedia set than the one Epstein posits: the 10-volume New Wonder World Encyclopedia.

My family couldn’t afford a 10-volume set, let alone one double or triple in size, so I believe this one came as a gift from a neighbor who worked for the publisher, Parents’ Institute.

What I know is that, while ignoring some volumes in the set (e.g., Agriculture and Industry), I positively tore through several others: Masterpieces of the Arts, Treasures of Literature, Highlights of American History, Great Events of World History, The Nations of the World, and most of all, Famous People of All Time, foreshadowing my lifelong interest in biographies.

The volumes were liberally filled with photos and illustrations, increasing its appeal for a child. They whetted my interest enough so that several years later, I was ready for the three-volume Columbia Encyclopedia, Third Edition, with denser type but no eye-catching graphics.

It’s impossible to imagine for someone growing up in the digital age, but for a reader with endless curiosity decades ago, minutes could fly by with print volumes—and it was not time the least bit wasted.

Quote of the Day (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Warning Not to ‘Waste Yourself in Rejection’)

"Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good."— American essayist-philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), journal entry, July 1841, in The Heart of Emerson’s Journals, edited by Bliss Perry (1926)

Quote of the Day (Aldous Huxley, on Improving)

“There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.” — English novelist/essayist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), Time Must Have a Stop (1944)