This simple, effective metaphor describing humour never fails to make me smile.
And its analogy lends insight for you can bask in humour in the same way as you can bask in the sun, since both will warm you.


Alberico Collina



"Humor is the sunshine of the mind." Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Apparently, in ancent times, people mostly read aloud, and the practice of silent reading was seen as extravagant and even sinister by many.

Nowadays, on the other hand, the opposite is true, and therefore, as Landor indicates, the writer must "converse" with the reader in silence.

And ironically these conversations are often the most eloquent we'll ever have.



Alberico Collina



"What is reading but silent conversation?" Walter Savage Landor

What are your friends to you?

Why do they reflect the way you are?

Why do you reflect the way they are?

Cicero answers all these questions about friendship and more in a single definition.

And because he's Cicero, he manages it in just six words.




Alberico Collina



"A friend is...a second self." Cicero

If anyone can define eloquence it has to be de la Rochefoucauld. In the same way as artists know when their work is complete, the eloquent employ the words they need. And only those.




Alberico Collina




“True eloquence consists in saying all that should be said, and stopping.” François de la Rochefoucauld

Burnet reminds us that the toughest things we go through in our lives, once we've survived them, recede far enough for us to put them into perspective.

And to laugh or at least smile at them.


Alberico Collina



"Comedy is tragedy plus time." Carol Burnett

When we hear wit, we recognise it.

Wit is sharp.

It stings but doesn't burn.

It's clever but not arrogant.

And there are hundreds of definitions of wit.

But only Aristotle's manages to be eloquent in just four words.


Alberico Collina



"Wit is educated insolence." Aristotle

The image this sentence evokes always gives me a kind of vertigo. And it brings home the notion that there are few things in this world more powerful than words...if someone is willing to read them.


Alberico Collina


"A small drop of ink makes thousands, perhaps millions... think." Lord Byron, Don Juan

Often, in dreams, things happen that apparently don't make sense. And these inconsistencies often wake us up.

Borges's metaphor, which depicts writing as a dream without inconsistencies, goes some way to explaining our propensity to suspend disbelief when reading fiction.

But Borges is not just any writer; readers walk, breathe, love, and die in his stories.

And they seldom wake up until they've read the last sentence.



Alberico Collina




"Writing is nothing more than a guided dream." Jorge Luis Borges