Today’s One-Liner (#172)
The basic function of literature, as far as I can say, is to entertain the spirit in a very big way. —Isaac Bashevis Singer: Conversations, edited by Grace Farrell, p. 75.
Category: World Literature
Proust Was Obviously before Your Time…
When he wrote— L’artiste qui renonce à une heure de travail pour une heure de causerie avec un ami sait qu’il sacrifie une réalité pour quelque chose qui n’existe pas.—Le temps retrouvé [The artist who…
The Greatest Message
When readers ask me about the message of my works, I tell them that the greatest message we’ve got is the Ten Commandments. They are short, precise, clear. We don’t need new messages, and they…
Today’s One-Liner (#171)
My life is botched-up because, at 26, I’ve yet to earn a steady income, I’ve yet to really help anyone in the world, including really taking care of myself, and I’ve yet to love a…
Confronting Mystery
Obviously great art must be an exceptional thing. It cannot be the sort of thing anyone can do after a few hours’ practice. It must be the result of some exceptional faculty, strength, or perception….
Today’s One-Liner (#165)
These are only hints and guesses, Hints followed by guesses; and the restIs prayer, observance, discipline, thought, and action. –T. S. Eliot, Dry Salvages
Bearing Fruit
Russian literature might almost be described as the literature of conversion. (We noted some famous instances in Chapter 3.) Time and again, suffering leads to awareness of Truth or apprehension of God. Tolstoy’s autobiographical Confession recounts…
God’s Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oilCrushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?Generations…
Today’s One-Liner (#160)
I read something from Boswells’ Life of Johnson almost every day. –James V. Schall, On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing
Today’s One-Liner (#159)
They buried [Bergotte], but all through the night of mourning, in the lighted windows, his books arranged three by three kept watch like angels with outspread wings and seemed, for him who was no more,…