Today’s One-Liner (#96)
I boasted to Rakitin that I gave an onion, but I’ll say it differently to you: in my whole life I’ve given just one little onion, that’s how much good I’ve done. –Grushenka to Alyosha,…
Category: Wisdom Traditions
Today’s One-Liner (#91)
It is not in our power to explain either the prosperity of the wicked or the afflictions of the righteous. –R. Yannai, in Joseph Hertz, Sayings of the Fathers
Today’s One-Liner (#90)
The fight for the dignity of all human life—and ultimately for a world that is more just, more beautiful, and more loving—needs all of us. –Lila Rose, Fighting for Life: Becoming a Force for Change…
Today’s One-Liner (#86)
I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise. –Dr. Samuel Johnson, quoted by James Boswell in The Life of Samuel Johnson
Today’s One-Liner (#85)
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. –Koheleth, 1:9, King James…
Today’s One-Liner (#84)
Make the impossible possible, the possible easy, the easy elegant. –Moshe Feldenkrais
Russian Reflections on Kindness
1. When nineteenth-century novelists exposed the hypocrisy of cruel people pretending to be kind, observed Nadezhda Mandelstam, they testified to the unquestioned acceptance of kindness as a virtue. As La Rochefoucauld observed, hypocrisy is the…
Today’s One-Liner (#83)
Constantly forge body and mind. –Miyamoto Musashi, Nine Articles, in John Stevens, Budo Secrets: Teachings of the Martial Arts Masters
Reading “Job”
There were ample precedents in Dostoevsky’s work for his thematic focus on the problem of theodicy raised by Ivan—the problem of the existence of evil and suffering in a world presumably created by a God…
Today’s One-Liner (#82)
The rules of the Kingdom of God are not at all utopian: if you want to put an end to mimetic rivalry, give way completely to your rival. –Rene Girard, Maxim #158, in All Desire…