Paying Close Attention
Francis showed great tenderness for all of God’s creatures, however humble. Remembering the Psalmist’s words: As for me, I am a worm and no man, he would pick up any earth-worms he found in his…
Month: September 2025
Today’s One-Liner (#268)
To make a man a saint, grace is certainly needed, and anyone who doubts this does not know what a saint, or a man, really is. –Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A.J. Krailsheimer, #869
Dictionary Bliss
Most of us prefer novels, biographies and memoirs. However, there are always those, like Malcolm X or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who see dictionaries as approachable texts and find magic in their method. –Henry Hitchings, Defining…
Today’s One-Liner (#267)
[Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language] easily ranks as one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship, and probably the greatest ever performed by one individual who labored under anything like the disadvantages in…
The Pleasure of Aphorisms
As most of the little book’s exegetes remark, the story [of Rasselas]–to term it so–is a thread upon which an extraordinary number of powerful adagio are precariously arranged in series. Johnson once remarked that he…
Today’s One-Liner (#266)
[Samuel Johnson] used the conventions and mechanisms of Grub Street—writing rapidly, writing to order, writing in a standard genre—to generate literature, happily defined by Ezra Pound as “news that stays news.” –Paul Fussell, Samuel Johnson…
Why We Need the Saints
We don’t escape mimesis, we can only observe it—and in observing it, loosen the grip that envy has on us. And while we may be doomed to mimesis, we have, at least, a choice between…
Today’s One-Liner (#265)
Peter’s denial is a spectacular example: as soon as he finds himself surrounded by people hostile to Jesus, he imitates their hostility. — René Girard, All Desire Is a Desire for Being: Essential Writings Selected by…
Inviting the Fury of the Devils
Brother Angelo was much afraid of evil spirits and asked Francis to let a brother sleep in his cell and keep him company at night. Francis said to him: Why fear weak and feeble foes…
Have Your Pen Ready
Marginalia are the immediate indices of the reader’s response to the text, of the dialogue between the book and himself. –George Steiner, No Passion Spent Essays 1978 — 1995