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….
Category: Commonplace book
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…
One’s Favorite Author
I regard the discovery of one’s favorite author as the most critical event in one’s intellectual development. There is such a thing as the affinity of spirits, and among the authors of ancient and modern…
Today’s One-Liner (#300)
Reading or the enjoyment of books has always been regarded among the charms of a cultured life and is respected and envied by those who rarely give themselves that privilege. –Lin Yutang, The Importance of…
A Personal Bible
Tolstoy wrote little in 1910 but considerable effort went into completing For Every Day, the compilation of quotations from great authors arranged so as to illustrate the development of his own philosophy of life, a…
Today’s One-Liner (#299)
The distance we have gone is less important than the direction in which we are going. –Leo Tolstoy, Spiritual Writings, edited Charles E. Moore
Today’s One-Liner (#298)
Philothea, since you wish to live a devout life you must not only cease to sin but you must also purify your heart of all affection for sin. –Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the…