What would be “a thousand times more serious” is revolutionary killing such as Dostoevsky was to predict in The Possessed. This book, alone among nineteenth-century works, foresaw what we have come to call totalitarianism, not…
I teach a course called Comparative Religion and Culture at Maryville University, and this past semester I was fortunate to be with Ajla Masinovic on Tuesdays and Thursdays. An engaged and insightful learner in each…
Depend on it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. —Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson There is no temper more unpropitious…
“This is the most sensible man that I ever say in my life.”—Mrs. Porter, on Dr. Johnson, quoted in W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson I live with the most sensible person I’ve ever seen in…
[Samuel Johnson] said, that for general improvement, a man should read whatever his immediate inclination prompts him to; though, to be sure, if a man has a science to learn, he must regularly and resolutely…
No man can form a just estimate of his own powers by unactive speculation. That fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by…
It is perhaps even more useful to contemplate our stupidity than our sin. Method of investigation— as soon as one has arrived at any position, try to find in what sense the contrary is true….
Every man has experienced how much of this ardour has been remitted, when a sharp or tedious sickness has set death before his eyes. The extensive influence of greatness, the glitter of wealth, the praises…
Dear Friends, This evening I will be on Zoom to facilitate a sharing of gratitude from today, this week, this fall season, or this year. Here’s an apt reflection to consider from Thich Nhat Hanh…
Every man believes that mistresses are unfaithful, and patrons capricious; but he excepts his own mistress, and his own patron. –Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson The tribe is likewise very numerous…