Keep It Simple

The goal of human life is constructing an architecture of the soul. –Simone Weil, quoted in Gabriella Fiori, Simone Weil: An Intellectual Biography

Circle of Influence

Men need but understand this: they need but stop troubling themselves about external and general matters, in which they are not free, and use but one hundredth part of the energy, which they employ on…

DIY

If men would but keep from ruining their own lives, and keep from expecting someone from outside to come and help them – either Christ on the clouds, with the flourish of trumpets, or some…

“Pure Distilled Evil”

Tablet‘s David Samuels has another illuminating interview, today with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. A brief excerpt- If you were saying, “My name is Bobby Kennedy, and I’m representing an organization called Riverkeeper, and we are…

Two Alyoshas

Dostoevsky’s—There was something in him that told one, that convinced one (and it was so all his life afterwards) that he did not want to be a judge of men, that he would not take…

He Made an Impression

“God grant us more such Russian rogues,” Marya Dmitrievna suddenly mixed in vexedly. “He lived a week with us; we saw nothing but good from him,” she said. “Courteous, wise, just.”   –Leo Tolstoy, Hadji…

Manufacturing Consent

And thus when, by a series of measures undertaken everywhere and at the same time—always thanks to the power in its hands at the command of the Government—a certain portion of the people, chiefly the…

The Golden Rule

Tzu-Kung asked saying, Is there any single saying that one can act upon all day and every day? The Master said, Perhaps the saying about consideration: ‘Never do to others what you would not like…