There are a LOT of really excellent things in the world. Here are some favorites I find worth sharing:
Things on the internet:
Examine
Wendy Carlos's explorations on non-integer octave subdivisions
Time – xkcd
Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
Fiction:
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss
Poems:
A Dog Was Crying To-Night in Wicklow Also – Seamus Heaney
Invictus – William Ernest Henley
The Orange – Wendy Cope
Rain – Mary Oliver
Le Mauvais Vitrier (The Bad Glazier) – Charles Baudelaire
Essays and Nonfiction:
Finite and Infinite Games – James Carse (The first chapter)
Poetry and Ambition – Donald Hall
How to do what you love – Paul Graham
Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young – Mary Schmich
Life's Stories – Julie Beck
The nyt's famous 36 Questions
Art:
Pandora – Odilon Redon
Mont Sainte-Victoire series – Paul Cézanne
The Course of Empire series – Thomas Cole
Music:
Prokofiev – Piano Concerto No. 2
Schnittke – Concerto Grosso
Barber – Piano Sonata (mvts 3 and 4)
Shchedrin – Basso Ostinato
Haydn Wood – Mannin Veen
Pat Metheny – The First Circle (especially as performed by Bob Curnow's LA Big Band)
Jacob Collier (The whole oeuvre)