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Signposts is a collection of quotes, sayings, proverbs, poems, or whatever. They are words that can point one in the direction of some thing or some place out there. Maybe they point to other words and other signposts. Maybe they point to no-where. Or maybe they point to some-where beyond words, to where being and truth and existence just are.

The spirit signposts are collected is in the idea of commonplace books—an anthology of illuminating passages “noted in a single place for future reference.”

[L]et us take down one of those old notebooks which we have all, at one time or another, had a passion for beginning. Most of the pages are blank, it is true; but at the beginning we shall find a certain number very beautifully covered with a strikingly legible hand-writing. Here we have written down the names of great writers in their order of merit; here we have copied out fine passages from the classics; here are lists of books to be read; and here, most interesting of all, lists of books that have actually been read, as the reader testifies with some youthful vanity by a dash of red ink.

— Virginia Woolf, Hours in a Library

No attempt has been made to organize these signposts. The “points” in the sidebar have no meaning or purpose. They are just labels to clump signposts together into chapters by a loose chronological order in which they were noted.

We shall not cease from exploring,
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

— T.S. Eliot

So, are you going to sit there staring at the signpost? Or are you going to seek out where it points, into the unchartable area of truth and beauty and meaning?

In silvam ne ligna feras.
(Don’t carry logs into the forest.)

— Horace

— Mark Woodward  (14 Jun 2007)