Arête [Greek for ‘excellence’] implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency…or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself.
— Strive for arête. A passage from H.D.F. Kitto’s The Greeks, as seen in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is one of those profoundly life-influencing books that after you’re done reading it, you want to flip back to page one and read it again. (via jackcheng)
