Author: Mark J. Chmiel

Today’s One-Liner (#135)

The dire state of the Palestinian movement today suggests that there is an inverse relationship between the use of terror and the achievement of freedom. –Susie Linfield, The Return of the Progressive Atrocity

Freeing up the Imagination

Not too long ago, I heard a tape of the memorial service held at Stanford University Chapel at the death of Eric Voegelin. On the tape, Professor William Havard, I think, remarked that Voegelin read…

Today’s One-Liner (#134)

I was crushed, overwhelmed by having to face what the nation of Goethe, Schiller, and Kant was capable of. –Rachmil Bryks, May God Avenge Their Blood: A Holocaust Memoir Triptych, trans. Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

Today’s One-Liner (#132)

We must collect all kinds of sayings and proverbs. –Isaac Bashevis Singer, Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt: The War Years, 1939-1945 , edited  by David Stromberg

Today’s One-Liner (#131)

If we respected the tenth commandment, the four commandments that precede it would be superfluous. –Rene Girard, Maxim #90, in All Desire Is a Desire for Being: Essential Writings, edited by Cynthia L. Haven

A Simple, Extraordinary Gift/2

I am engrossed  these days rereading Nadezhda Mandelstam’s inspiring memoir, Hope Against Hope.  It’s an account of her life with her husband, the acclaimed poet Osip Mandelstam who ran afoul of the revolutionaries of the…

A Simple, Extraordinary Gift/1

“And I am with you, too, I won’t leave you now, I will go with you for the rest of my life,” the dear, deeply felt words of Grushenka came from somewhere near him. And…