330 — Pt. I, Sec. 2, Mem. III, Subsect. 15 — Love of Learning, or overmuch Study. With a Digression of the Misery of Scholars, and why the Muses are Melancholy (Overmuch Study) (Again Again)

“For my part, though I be not worthy perhaps to carry Alexander’s books… but I replied still with Alexander, that I had enough, and more peradventure than I deserved… I had as lief be still Democritus Junior, and privus privatus, si mihi jam daretur optio, quam talis fortasse doctor, talis dominus [an obscure individual, if […]

Please Accept My Most Saturnine Birthday Wishes, My Melancholic Friend: A Caption Contest

Caption Contest! I’m working on a birthday card, because melancholiacs, Goths, and ghosts have birthdays too. (Or do they…?) I guess it could work for ghosts who are graduating from high school and college too. Comment with your best caption for this festive ghost birthday card. If I use it, I’ll send you one for free […]

Anatomy of Melancholy , 154-157: Of the Soul and her Faculties, continued

  The common division of the soul is into three principal faculties–vegetal, sensitive, and rational, which make three distinct kinds of living creatures–vegetal plants, sensible beasts, rational men. How these three principal faculties are distinguished and connected, Humano ingenio inaccessum videtur, is beyond human capacity, as Taurellus, Philip, Flavins, and others suppose. The inferior may […]