Today’s One-Liner (#330)
Eventually, as a tribute to Maritain’s influence on me and on many others, I wrote The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain: A Spiritual Life, and I advise any reader captivated by this little sketch…
Category: Philosophy
In Pursuit of Holiness
Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), a Frenchman, a layman, and a convert to Catholicism, became one of the most prominent figures in the Thomistic Revival. During World War II, the Maritains found themselves with other exiles in…
Today’s One-Liner (#328)
The greatest kindness one can render to any man consists in leading him from error to truth. –Saint Thomas Aquinas, in Josef Pieper, The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas, #128
Simplify
For there are only three kinds of good. So if a thing is not virtuous, useful, or pleasant, it’s not really good. So fagetaboutit! Simplify your life by throwing out all the things you have…
Two Kinds of People
Go back to Socrates: “Know thyself.” For Socrates, there are only two kinds of people: the wise, who know they are fools; and fools, who think they are wise. Similarly, for Christ and all the…
Choices Make Habits
St. Thomas, as usual, is the apostle of common sense. Virtue, like reason and language, is in us by nature potentially—we are designed for it—but since the actualization of this potentiality depends on our free…
Today’s One-Liner (#305)
Whoever, on the other hand, frees himself of all attachment to temporal goods attains to magnanimity, liberty of spirit, clarity of reason, deep rest, peaceful confidence in God, true homage of God, and genuine submission…
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
Come Out Swinging
[Simone] Weil’s critique of Marx is impressive in its sweep, its remorseless logic, and its passion, recalling the contemporary writing of Berdiaev. –David McLellan/ Utopian Pessimist: The Life and Thought of Simone Weil, 77
Today’s One-Liner (#289)
While I thought that there was some element of madness in her projects, I recall that after having seen her I was even more convinced than before that she was some sort of saint. –Simone…