Something I Came across in Tablet
Consider, for a moment, the road traveled by many American Jews these past 15 months. One day, they were members in good standing of a virtuous, unimpeachable community of people who attended the finest schools,…
Category: Intellectuals
Advice from 1921
Therefore, be slow to speak and slow to go to those places where people speak, because in many words the spirit is poured out like water; by your amiability to all, purchase the right really…
Back to Bach
Listen to certain Preludes of Bach. They do not say much; there is a short motif repeated; then insistent variations in no higher relief than that of a medal by Roty. But what a level…
Today’s One-Liner (#108)
Nothing is more difficult to overcome than the problems we thought were already overcome.–Alexis de Tocqueville, via my friend Suzanne Renard
Today’s One-Liner (#65)
I want to defend my culture, not theirs, and I inform you that I like Dante Alighieri and Shakespeare and Goethe and Verlaine and Walt Whitman and Leopardi much more than Omar Khayyam. –Oriana Fallaci,…
Recent Reading
The job of an intellectual is to listen to the history that is being made all around you and to respond in new ways by re-assessing your previous beliefs. This is what the founding generation…
Today’s One-Liner (#61)
It is perhaps even more useful to contemplate our stupidity than our sin. –Simone Weil, Waiting for God
Today’s One-Liner (#19)
Whenever people really believe in some truth larger than the academic world, they do not dedicate themselves to the pursuit of academic success with as much ferocity as the people who believe in absolutely nothing. …
Today’s One-Liner (#11)
Method of investigation— as soon as one has arrived at any position, try to find in what sense the contrary is true. –Simone Weil, Waiting for God
Gratitude/2
For my teacher Marc H. Ellis who gave me apt advice when I nervously started started teaching in 1997: “Don’t worry about what the students give to you. Just give everything you’ve got to your…