Four or Five Times in Life
“He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It…
Category: Commonplace book
Today’s One-Liner (#341)
We must dare to be love in a world that does not know how to love. –Charles de Foucauld, cited in Isaac Slater, OCSO, “Do Not Judge Anyone”: Desert Wisdom for a Polarized World
Taking Stock
What have we accomplished? Good new poetry, that oughta be enough. –Jack Kerouac, in The Letters, by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, edited by Bill Morgan and David Stanford, 472
Today’s One-Liner (#337)
The Catholic who engages in philosophy is part of a tradition that stretches back through the centuries, and his task is to appropriate that patrimony and make it part of the contemporary conversation. –Ralph McInerny, I…
Keep Track
Yet who can tell how many times each day our curiosity is tempted by the most trivial and insignificant matters? Who can tell how often we give way? –Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin,…
Today’s One-Liner (#336)
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. — Psalm 23, verse 4,…
Every Grain of Sand
Every particle of sand in the glass of time is precious to me, even if I were able to set my facts in order and give an account of them. –Saint Augustine, Confessions, 253-4, translated by…
Today’s One-Liner (#334)
[Augustine] is led from confession of sin to confession of faith and finally to confession of God’s glory. –R. S. Pine-Coffin, translator in Saint Augustine, Confessions. 16
Saint Bernadette
To the end she was what she had been at the beginning, Bernadette, the poor child of Lourdes, doing always with her might what her hand found to do, little enough though that was. And…
Today’s One-Liner (#333)
“Oh, why can’t they leave me in peace!” –Saint Bernadette Soubirous, quoted in R. H. J. Steuart, S.J., in Saints Are Not Sad: Studies in Sanctity from St. Paul to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, edited by F….