Today’s One-Liner (#223)
Perhaps the vast rise in antagonism toward Israel is a manifestation of what psychologists would call “projection.” –Douglas Murray, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization, 116
Kafka, Sholom Aleichem, Peretz
In this respect Sholom Aleichem and Peretz are more like Kafka than any of the three are like most modern writers. The Yiddish masters are largely unconcerned with the psychology of individual difference; Kafka…
Today’s One-Liner (#222)
You never know where the Angel of Death will make a date with you. –Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman, Shprintze, 96
Bearing Witness
In the fearful years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. One day somebody ‘identified’ me. Beside me, in the queue, there was a woman with blue lips. She…
Today’s One-Liner (#221)
This is the Akhmatova who, in a friend’s words, could not bear to see another person’s suffering, though she bore her own without complaint. –D. M. Thomas, Introduction to his translation of Anna Akhmatova, Selected…
Be Wary
Once indiscriminate violence becomes welcome, is there any limit to that harm? Chekhov suggests: perhaps the greatest brutality comes from humane, well-educated idealists. –Gary Saul Morson, Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions And Why Their…
Today’s One-Liner (#220)
In mental prayer, shut your eyes, shut your mouth, and open your heart. –Saint John Vianney, quoted in Mother Teresa, Everything Starts from Prayer: Meditations on Spiritual Life for People of All Faiths, selected and…
Faith
Mother Teresa of Calcutta did not become an international icon of selfless generosity despite her belief in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God and the unique savior of the world; she lifted the wretched…
Love Is Labor
I am sorry that I cannot say anything more comforting, for active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with…
Today’s One-Liner (#219)
If we would only avoid deceiving ourselves, we would find out what to do, where to go, how to live, and do so with clarity. –Leo Tolstoy, Spiritual Writings, edited Charles E. Moore