Epigraphs
One use of his commonplaces was to supply mottoes for his own and others’ periodical essays. Johnson’s adeptness in providing epigraphs suggests something about how he read and filed away crystals of literature that…
Category: Commonplace book
Today’s One-Liner (#293)
This is that conquest of the world and of ourselves, which has been always considered as the perfection of human nature; and this is only to be obtained by fervent prayer, steady resolution, and frequent…
Today’s One-Liner (#292)
The four cardinal natural virtues are fertilizer for the spiritual soil in which the three theological virtues are to grow. –Peter Kreeft, Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas, 113
First Things First
Let us look at our own shortcomings and leave other people’s alone; for those who live carefully ordered lives are apt to be shocked at everything and we might well learn very important lessons from…
Today’s One-Liner (#291)
In the West, too, appeared The Gulag Archipelago, his monumental three-volume exposé of the Soviet slave-labor system which single-handedly destroyed what remained of Western illusions about the great Communist experiment. –Joseph Epstein, Life Sentences: Literary…
What Makes for Peace
Do not think yourself better than others lest, perhaps, you be accounted worse before God Who knows what is in man. Do not take pride in your good deeds, for God’s judgments differ from those…
Today’s One-Liner (#288)
A spiritual man quickly recollects himself because he has never wasted his attention upon externals. –Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, translated by Aloysius Croft and Harold Bolton
Today’s One-Liner (#286)
To live by love is to go through life, sowing peace and joy in hearts. –Francis Broome, The Little Way for Every Day: Thoughts from Thérèse of Lisieux
Today’s One-Liner (#284)
With this book, he came out of the intellectually unfashionable Christian closet. –Cynthia L. Haven on René Girard’s book, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, in her Evolution of Desire: A Life of…
Plenty of Time
Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That’s absolute nonsense. In the one year during which I kept that kind of record, I read twenty-five books while waiting for people….