Author: Mark J. Chmiel

Stay with Christ

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s famous dictum that he would stay with Christ even if he were proven scientifically wrong suggests no more and no less than a belief in the primacy of moral values over theoretical knowledge….

Today’s One-Liner (#189)

Jokes could be fatal in the Soviet Union. –Gary Saul Morson, Wisdom Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter

The Talmud Jew

The Talmud Jew doesn’t kill. He doesn’t take part in wild orgies. You don’t have to fear him in the woods or on a lonely road. He doesn’t carry a gun. He doesn’t scheme to…

Today’s One-Liner (#188)

Hillel said, Separate not thyself from the congregation; trust not in thyself until the day of thy death; judge not thy fellow-man until thou art come into his place and say not anything which cannot…

Portrait of the Artist as a Kid

 In his new school James excelled at lessons and won prizes for the best English compositions. The money helped to buy clothes and food for the needy family and even allowed for little trips to…

Today’s One-Liner (#187)

I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. Stephen Dedalus, in James Joyce, A Portrait of…

Then Things Changed

“I was prepared actually never to be translated, never to be known, to remain a Yiddish writer.” –Isaac Bashevis Singer, quoted in Janet Hadda, Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Life, 88

Triumph

If you completely conquer yourself, you will more easily subdue all other things. The perfect victory is to triumph over self. For he who holds himself in such subjection that sensuality obeys reason and reason…

Today’s One-Liner (#185)

We had many mutual friends while he was studying at Harvard and I was working in Boston, but I think our first face-to-face meeting was in jail in Brookline, Massachusetts, after we had both been…