Ecclesiastes
Compared with the neat little nostrums of comfort-mongering minds who cross our t’s and dot our i’s, Ecclesiastes is as great, as deep, and as terrifying as the ocean. If this philosopher were alive today…
Category: Commonplace book
Today’s One-Liner (#233)
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. —Ecclesiastes, 1: 14
For the Young
St. Augustine’s famous Confessions is a book directed to the very heart of each young person. No other book is quite like it. In it, Augustine excitedly tells us about his reading of Cicero’s now…
Today’s One-Liner (#232)
The soul lives when it avoids the things which it is death to seek. –Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin
Today’s One-Liner (#231)
The writer wakens you, the reader, he rouses you out of your indifference, he shows you the things you had not seen before, he makes your imagination work, he gives you wings, and you see…
Turning
It is at those moments when we are, as we say, in a bad mood, when we feel incapable of the elevation of soul that befits holy things, it is then that it is most…
Today’s One-Liner (#230)
I don’t find anything comparable to the magnificent beauty of a soul and its marvelous capacity. –Saint Teresa of Avila, quoted from The Interior Castle in Rosemary Broughton, Praying with Teresa of Avila
Being Cured
The Lord’s Prayer instructs, and while instructing us it puts ointment on our wounds. If there are some among us who think themselves perfect, they will be cured of their presumption. If there are some…
Today’s One-Liner (#229)
I recited the Our Father in Greek every day before work and I repeated it very often in the vineyard. –Simone Weil, Waiting for God
It’s Not Everyday Your Soul Gets Restored
“Rakitin,” [Alyosha Karamazov] suddenly said loudly and firmly, “don’t taunt me with having rebelled against my God. I don’t want to hold any anger against you, and therefore you be kinder, too. I’ve lost such…