Author: Mark J. Chmiel

Plenty of Time

Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That’s absolute nonsense. In the one year during which I kept that kind of record, I read twenty-five books while waiting for people….

Today’s One-Liner (#283)

[As a student, Howard] Thurman did this by, among other things, reading quite literally every book on the shelves of Morehouse’s admittedly modest library, most of the religious texts donated by retired white ministers.  –Sohrab…

Readiness Is All

Every time I re-read a book of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, or Aquinas, I shake my head and wonder why I had not seen that before. The answer is most likely that I was not ready…

Outright Joy

For the “romance” of Clare and Francis has always exuded a warmth and a brightness that cannot be accounted for by the actual events. I believe the source of that fire is partly our own…

Today’s One-Liner (#281)

Within the Christian tradition more than a suspicion exists that the more intelligent we are,  the more we consider ourselves to be “intellectuals,” the more difficult it is to save our souls.  –James V. Schall,…

The Jewish Inheritance

Leon Wieseltier also took pleasure in studying with Wiesel. The two would spend time on the phone analyzing, say, a poem by Hayim Nachman Bialik, or a rabbinical text or midrash. Wieseltier prized the “depth…

Today’s One-Liner (#280)

After [Elie Wiesel’s] death on July 2, 2016, the Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum praised him as an “heir of Jeremiah with his message of rebuke but also of Isaiah with his words of consolation.” –Joseph…

Virtue’s Greatness

Fortitude appears to excel among the virtues. Virtue is concerned with things difficult and good. But fortitude is concerned with difficulty; hence it is the greatest of the virtues. To this we must reply: the…

Today’s One-Liner (#279)

And while it’s nice to feel virtuous, it’s worth considering whether feeling virtuous and being virtuous are actually the same thing.  –Bret Easton Ellis, White, 89