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 

Training in Recording

In the early  part of my acquaintance with him, I was so wrapt in admiration of his extraordinary colloquial talents, and so little accustomed to this peculiar mode of expression, that I found it extremely…

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,…

Aspiring to Holiness

You know, Mother, I have always wanted to be a saint. Alas! I have always noticed that when I compared myself to the saints, there is between them and me the same difference that exists…

Today’s One-Liner (#158)

You may be exhausted with work, even kill yourself, but unless your work is interwoven with love, it is useless. –Mother Teresa, Everything Starts from Prayer, Selected and Arranged by Anthony Stern

Praying

When you say prayers, say: Father, may your kingdom be ours. Give us bread for today.  Overlook our indebtedness to others, as we overlook theirs to us. Give us the strength to resist temptations.  –Guy…

Today’s One-Liner (#157)

You can get Ovid, or rather Ovid’s stories in Golding’s Metamorphoses, which is the most beautiful book in the language (my opinion and I suspect it was Shakespeare’s). –Ezra Pound, The ABC of Reading

Keeping It Simple

Shortly after publishing his novel Helena, in which he retold the story of the emperor Constantine’s mother and her quest for the true cross, Evelyn Waugh received a congratulatory note from a friend, the poet…

Today’s One-Liner (#156)

Someone who knows Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Augustine, or Aquinas will never be too far from the truth, never out-of-date. –James V. Schall, S.J., A Student’s Guide to Liberal Learning 

Writing Daily

Often quoting Stendhal to the effect that one should “write every day, whether inspired or not,” Alain encouraged his students to sit down at a desk and write prolifically, as he did, at least two…