The Road to Character by David Brooks
우연한 기회로 처음 접한 책은 The Social Animal 이다. 읽는 자체가 많은 즐거움과 도움을 주는 책이었다. 그리고 다른 인문서적을 선택하는데 적지 않은 영향을 준것이 사실이다. 사람에 따라서 다르겠지만 개인적으로 추천하는 책이다. The Road to Character 는 두 번째로 접한 David Brooks의 책이다. 읽으면서 느낀거지만 이 작가는 참 박식하고 글을 잘쓰는 사람이라는 것을 느끼게 된다. 학창시절이후로 책을 읽으면서 밑줄치는 경우가 드문데 이 작가의 책들은 밑줄치고 싶은 욕구를 주체할 수가 없다. The Road to Character 라는 책도 정말 두번 세번 읽고 생각하게 만드는 문장들이 많았다. 번역된 책도 있기게 원서가 아니더라도 읽어보길 추천한다.
작가는 크게 Adam 1과 Adam 2 로 구분하여 글을 전개하고 다양한 역사적 사회적 예들을 통해서 Adam 2 의 삶을 강조하고 있다. Adam 1 은 resume virtues 를 의미한다면 Adam 2 는 eulogy virtue 를 말한다. 사무엘 존슨, 토마스 아퀴나스, 마샬, 아이젠하워, 엘리어트, 흑인 운동가등 당야한 인물들의 삶을 예로서 보여주는 글이다.
- Humility is the awareness that there's a lot you don't know and that a lot of what you think you know is distorted or wrong. This is the way humility leads to wisdom.
- Montaigne ; We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we can't be wise with other men's wisdom.
- Henry Fairlie ; If we acknowledge that our inclination to sin is part of our natures, and that we will never wholly eradicate it, there is at least something for us to do in our lives that will not in the end seem just futile and absurd.
- Character is not innate or automatic. It is built not only through austerity and hardship.
- Kierkegaard ; only the one who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved.
- The central fallacy of modern life is the belief that accomplishments of the adam 1 realm can produce deep satisfaction. Adam 2 knows that happiness is insufficient. The ultimate joys are moral joys.
- Victor Frankl ; It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly.
- Nietzsche ; He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
- Life is ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets before the individual.
- Benevolence is the twin of pride.
- Humility is the greatest of virtues.
- If you can't smile when you get up from a knockdown, you are never going to lick an opponent.
- Eisenhower ; A sense of humility is a quality I have observed in every leader whom I have deeply admired. My own conviction is that every leader should have enough humility to accept, publicly, the responsibility for the mistakes of the subordinates he has himself selected ....
-Harry Clor ; The fundmental division in the soul or psyche is at the root of our need for moderation.
- Governing is more like sailing in a storm.
- Mother Teresa ; Life is like a "night spent in an uncomfortable inn" ; I LIKE IT !!!
- The first big thing suffering does is it drags you deeper into yourself.
- People who endure suffering are taken beneath the routine busyness of life and find they are not who they believed themselves to be.
- Depressive realism ; The pleasure in suffering is that you feel you are getting beneath the superficial and approaching the fundmental.
- Suffering gives people a more accurate sense of their own limitations, of what they can control and not control.
- Life is unpredictable and the meritocrat's efforts at total control are an illusion. Suffering, oddly, also teaches gratitude.
- They can't determine the course of their pain, but they can participate in responding to it.
- Suffering becomes a fearful gift, very different from that other gift, happiness, conventionally defined. The latter brings pleasure, but the former cultivates character.
-In commercial society you expressed self by shopping and building a "lifestyle."
-Thomas Aquinas ; In order to lead a good life, it is necessary to focus more on our exemplars than on ourselves ........
- Kierkegaard spoke of character as 'engraved', deeply etched.
- The nonviolent path is an ironic path ; the weak can triumph by enduring suffering ; the oppressed must not fight back if they hope to defeat their oppressor.
- Dramatic change, when it is necessary, rarely comes through sweet suasion.
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