Author: Mark J. Chmiel

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…

Four Questions

How many hours do you think you waste every week complaining about things that happened to you that are out of your control? How much time do you spend worrying about things that might happen…

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….

A Horse’s Soul Is…

Horses  always seem utterly inscrutable. Even when they laugh or weep, they look quite imperturbable. All the horse’s powers of expression have gone into its parts: these are never still for a minute, twitching, twirling…

Today’s One-Liner (#302)

A novel is a trap, a maze into which we are drawn by the plot until we are swallowed up by the narrative, becoming  its prisoner and confidante.  –Abram Tertz,  A Voice from the Chorus,…

Warning

Some thinkers have sadly concluded that the enchantment Nadezhda Mandelstam recognized in the word revolution, “to which ­whole nations have succumbed,” continues to bewitch intellectuals. In his argument with dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn accused…

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…