Author: Mark J. Chmiel

Favorite Simone Weil Passages

It is perhaps even more useful to contemplate our stupidity than our sin.  Method of investigation— as soon as one has arrived at any position, try to find in what sense the contrary is true….

Diligence

Every man has experienced how much of this ardour has been remitted, when a sharp or tedious sickness has set death before his eyes. The extensive influence of greatness, the glitter of wealth, the praises…

Sharing Gratitude This Evening

Dear Friends,  This evening I will be on Zoom to facilitate a sharing of  gratitude from today, this week, this fall season, or this year. Here’s an apt reflection to consider from Thich Nhat Hanh…

Missing the Mark

Every man believes that mistresses are unfaithful, and patrons capricious; but he excepts his own mistress, and his own patron.  –Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson The tribe is likewise very numerous…

Amongst My Books

“… at least resolve, while you remain in any settled residence, to spend a certain number of hours every day amongst your books…”—Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson “Amongst”  could…

Long Live Vivacity!

Depend upon it, Sir, vivacity is much an art, and depends greatly on habit.—Samuel Johnson, in A Johnson Sampler, edited by Henry Darcy Curwen. I’ve never thought about vivacity in this way …To master an…

Up to Me

Let us cease to consider what, perhaps, may never happen, and what, when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation. We will not endeavour to modify the motions of the elements, or to fix…

Stolen at Gunpoint

I’m grateful to have come across Kari’s kind correspondence in a file this evening. Dear Mark,  I just wanted to drop you a note to thank you for taking the time to write The Book…

By Little and Little

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant…