Category: Commonplace book

To Learn by Heart

In a more general vein: that which we know by heart will ripen and deploy within us. The memorized text interacts with our temporal existence, modifying our experiences, being dialectically modified by them. The stronger…

Today’s One-Liner (#239)

I hope to read the whole Bible once a year as long as I live. –Dr. Samuel Johnson, quoted in Fiona MacMath, The Faith of Samuel Johnson: An Anthology of His Spiritual and Moral Writings…

Inexplicable, and I Most of All

“And I shall also tell you, dear mother, that each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most of all.” At that mother even smiled, she wept and smiled: “How can it…

Today’s One-Liner (#238)

And every day, down to this day, I have remembered the long-suffering servant of God, Mikhail, in my prayers. –Starets Zosima, in Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

St. Thomas Aquinas

Sheer intellectual greatness is never so attractive, never appeals so much to the imagination and to the emotions as greatness of a more practical kind. That is why Napoleon, Caesar, and Joan of Arc will…

Today’s One-Liner (#237)

Inordinate fear is included in every sin; the miser fears the loss of money, the intemperate man the loss of pleasure. –Saint Thomas Aquinas, in Josef Pieper, The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas, #302

Long Live Reason

To judge one’s own judgment: this can only be done by the reason, which reflects on its own act and knows the relation between that upon which it judges and that by which it judges….

Today’s One-Liner (#235)

We are not free unless we are good, and we are not good unless we listen to reason. –Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas–350+ Ways Your Mind Can Help You Become…