Quote of the Day (Arthur Schopenhauer, on Why ‘It Is a Stupid Thing To Be Rude’)

“It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter—an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.” — German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims, translated by T. Bailey Saunders (1851)

Quote of the Day (David Mason, on Fiction and ‘Small Passages of Civility in Our Lives’)

“Fiction allows us to mourn with strangers. Even horrifying stories create, by virtue of their shape and their empathy, small passages of civility in our lives. Civilization is something we must choose; humanity is something we must make. Novels are particularly well-equipped to show us how social problems affect individual lives, but artists rarely envision viable solutions to the problems they dramatize. Perhaps it is easier to forgive in the imagination than in the streets and pubs and houses.”—American poet, librettist ,essayist, and memoirist David Mason, “Forgiving the Past,” The Sewanee Review, Spring 1998 (“Irish Literature Today”)

Mason’s essay appeared in the relatively early days of American polarization, as ideologically driven cable news stations and Internet sites were just starting to exacerbate real but still not unbridgeable differences in the nation. Since then, more and more people are addicted to their mobile phones and anti-social media.

Genres that require time, patience, and understanding—very much including the novel—have been increasingly falling by the wayside in the last quarter-century—and those “small passages of civility in our lives” that Mason hailed are growing increasingly narrow.

(The accompanying outdoor photo of David Mason, taken Apr. 24, 2012, was sent by the poet to Christine Mason.)

Quote of the Day (Celeste Headlee, on the Need to Talk and Listen to One Another)

“We must learn how to talk to one another and, more important, listen to one other. We must learn to talk to people we disagree with, because you can’t unfriend everyone in real life.”— Public radio journalist Celeste Headlee, We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter (2017)

The accompanying image of Celeste Headlee was taken Apr. 4, 2012, by Sheryl Victor Levy.

Quote of the Day (Michael Gerson, on Politics as a Battlefield)

“Those who see politics only as a method to defeat enemies and advance favored aims have lost sight of something important. We should honor democratic values, such as civility, not only because they make our system function, but because they make our system noble. We should treat our fellow citizens with respect because we share a role in, and responsibility for, an experiment in self-government that remains the last, best hope of Earth.”—Columnist and former Presidential speechwriter Michael Gerson, “The Power of Civility,” The Washington Post, June 7, 2019

(The image accompanying this post was taken when Michael Gerson was part of the George W. Bush administration.)

Quote of the Day (Amy Poehler, on How to Disagree Effectively)

“If you can speak about what you care about to a person you disagree with without denigrating them or insulting them, then you may actually be heard. And you may even change their mind. Or they may change yours.” —Amy Poehler, “Ask Amy” video