Miscellany
“When Simonides or someone offered to teach him the art of memory,” Cicero noted in his De Finibus, the Athenian politician Themistocles “replied that he would prefer the art of forgetting. ‘For I remember,’ said he, ‘even things I do not wish to remember, but I cannot forget things I wish to forget.’ ”
Miscellany
According to philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, “Writing was an invention which took about two thousand years to make its effect felt. Do you recall, even in Plato’s dialogues, the discussions are seldom if ever about what the participants have ‘read’ but almost invariably about what they ‘remember’?”
Miscellany
“It is a sign of rain,” wrote the author of the fourth-century-bc Greek treatise On Weather Signs, “if a hawk perches on a tree, flies right into it, and proceeds to search for lice. Also, when in summer a number of birds living on an island pack together, if a moderate number collect, it is a good sign for goats and flocks, while if the number is exceedingly large, it portends a severe drought.”
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