Open a Book
There was nothing to do but wait it out. My kind has to become accustomed to loneliness. And when one is alone there is nothing to do but study. –Isaac Bashevis Singer, In My Father’s…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Today’s One-Liner (#175)
Cultivate the art of omission, of elimination, of simplification: that is the secret of strength. ––A.G. Sertillanges, O.P., The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, translated by Mary Ryan, 208
A Zone of Silence
Do you want to do intellectual work? Begin by creating within you a zone of silence, a habit of recollection, a will to renunciation and detachment which puts you entirely at the disposal of the…
Today’s One-Liner (#174)
Whenever I was in love I always felt there was a telegraphic esprit between the person and me. –—Isaac Bashevis Singer: Conversations, edited by Grace Farrell, p. 206
Today’s One-Liner (#173)
In some radical circles the vehemence of one’s feelings against the hierarchy is taken as an index of genuine Christianity. –James Hitchcock, The Decline and Fall of Radical Catholicism, 1971
Each and Every
Therefore we take joy in all the living, the unborn, the rejected and despised, those declared expendable, the aged (so often also unwanted). We welcome them all! We rejoice in each and every one! –Daniel…
Nadezhda
Why, at the dawn of the new era, at the very beginning of the fratricidal twentieth century, was I given the name Nadezhda [“Hope” ] ? All I now heard from our friends and acquaintances…
Today’s One-Liner (#172)
The basic function of literature, as far as I can say, is to entertain the spirit in a very big way. —Isaac Bashevis Singer: Conversations, edited by Grace Farrell, p. 75.
Proust Was Obviously before Your Time…
When he wrote— L’artiste qui renonce à une heure de travail pour une heure de causerie avec un ami sait qu’il sacrifie une réalité pour quelque chose qui n’existe pas.—Le temps retrouvé [The artist who…
Slowpoke
Only dilettantes go to Spain for four weeks and come back with a novel about Spain. —Isaac Bashevis Singer: Conversations, edited by Grace Farrell, p. 153. In my case, I went to the Middle East…