Senior Honors
From the obituary in today's New York Times of historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.–
"Mr. Schlesinger, partly through his appreciation of history, fully realized his good fortune. 'I have lived through interesting times and had the luck of knowing some interesting people,' he wrote.
A huge part of his luck was his father, who guided much of his early research, and even suggested the topic for his [Harvard] senior honors: Orestes A. Brownson, a 19th-century journalist, novelist and theologian. It was published by Little, Brown in 1938 as 'Orestes A. Brownson: A Pilgrim's Progress.'"
From The Catholic Encyclopedia:
"It is sufficient for true knowledge that it affirm as real that which is truly real."
From The Diamond Theory of Truth:
"Was there really a cherubim waiting at the star-watching rock…?
Was he real?
What is real?— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973, conclusion of Chapter Three, "The Man in the Night"
"Oh, Euclid, I suppose."
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1962, conclusion of Chapter Five, "The Tesseract"
Related material: Yesterday's first annual "Tell Your Story Day" at Harvard and yesterday's entry on Euclid.