A Personal Summa
The Summae of old were the Bibles of knowledge: we have now no Summae, and no one among us is capable of writing one. Everything is in chaos. But at least, if a collective Summa…
Category: Wisdom Traditions
Today’s One-Liner (#311)
Reflect that in this world nothing but virtue and devotion can satisfy your soul. –Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, trans. John K. Ryan, 270
Today’s One-Liner (#309)
In the same way, I tell you, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repenting than over ninety-nine upright people who have no need of repentance. –The Gospel according to Luke, 15:7
Choices Make Habits
St. Thomas, as usual, is the apostle of common sense. Virtue, like reason and language, is in us by nature potentially—we are designed for it—but since the actualization of this potentiality depends on our free…
Avoiding and Embracing
Any line of behavior that fails to quicken the divine in man should be eschewed, no matter how enticing it might appear; but any that helps to awaken man’s inherent divinity must be resolutely adopted,…
Today’s One-Liner (#305)
Whoever, on the other hand, frees himself of all attachment to temporal goods attains to magnanimity, liberty of spirit, clarity of reason, deep rest, peaceful confidence in God, true homage of God, and genuine submission…
Engagingly Readable
Dostoevsky is not a writer to struggle through or with, but one who tries to make his work as interesting and exciting—and as readable—as possible. His works raise some of the deepest moral and philosophic…
Today’s One-Liner (#303)
Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education….
Today’s One-Liner (#301)
Tolstoy and other classic writers deemed it their duty to curse prison, but Solzhenitsyn, who served time in conditions those writers could not have begun to imagine, can “say without hesitation: ‘Bless you, prison, for…
Today’s One-Liner (#298)
Philothea, since you wish to live a devout life you must not only cease to sin but you must also purify your heart of all affection for sin. –Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the…