Category: World Literature

Today’s One-Liner (#148)

In Poor Folk we have the first timid and hesitant expression of the great theme of theodicy, the questioning of the wisdom of the world created by God—thus a questioning of God himself—that will ultimately…

Today’s One-Liner (#137)

If we search for God and we are good to human beings, we are doing more or less our job. –Isaac Bashevis Singer, Conversations, edited by Grace Farrell

Freeing up the Imagination

Not too long ago, I heard a tape of the memorial service held at Stanford University Chapel at the death of Eric Voegelin. On the tape, Professor William Havard, I think, remarked that Voegelin read…

Today’s One-Liner (#132)

We must collect all kinds of sayings and proverbs. –Isaac Bashevis Singer, Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt: The War Years, 1939-1945 , edited  by David Stromberg

A Simple, Extraordinary Gift/1

“And I am with you, too, I won’t leave you now, I will go with you for the rest of my life,” the dear, deeply felt words of Grushenka came from somewhere near him. And…

Today’s One-Liner (#128)

There are few things… that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the Fair Sex. –Samuel Johnson, in A Johnson…

Today’s One-Liner (#126)

Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history…