A person can live in a narrow world or a wider universe. He can live in a state of stagnation with no goals or ambitions, or keep his life in ...
Read More »The Art of Living: Opera and Woodworking
In The Way of a Storyteller Ruth Sawyer tells an anecdote about a gifted furniture maker renowned for his craftsmanship whose work was in great demand by the prominent and ...
Read More »Wisdom: The Fruit of True Education
This piece is transcribed from a commencement speech delivered by the author. In Lucretius’s famous words, “Nothing can come from nothing.” A hundred or a thousand or a million times ...
Read More »G.K. Chesterton’s ‘The Ballad of the White Horse’
This 100th anniversary edition of Chesterton’s poetic version of King Alfred’s heroic defense of Christian England from the pagan Danes is an exquisite publication.It embellishes the famous narrative and provides ...
Read More »Classics for the Young: Junior High Literature
Simone Weil, a noted Jewish philosopher, remarked, “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, ...
Read More »Classics for the Young: Middle School Literature
In A Wonder Book and The Tanglewood Tales Hawthorne retells some of the famous classical myths in an imaginative and charming style that captures the universality and moral wisdom of ...
Read More »The World is Charged with the Grandeur of God
One of the greatest of Catholic poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., is best known for his appreciation of the beauty, variety, and individuality (“this-ness”) of God’s creation. As a poet ...
Read More »Wisdom from Nature
“It’s knowing what to do with things that counts.”—Robert Frost, “At Woodward’s Gardens” In Frost’s poem, “At Woodward’s Gardens,” a boy visiting a zoo carries a magnifying glass. From his ...
Read More »Sawyer and Cervantes
Sancho Panza, the comical squire of the illustrious Don Quixote who vowed to restore knight-errantry into a debased world and recover the Golden Age, once told his master, “An ass ...
Read More »Proud and Prejudicial
“It is not enough that your actions are good. You must take care that they appear so.” In Henry Fielding’s novel Tom Jones, the wise Squire Allworthy offers this advice ...
Read More »The Art of Friendship
One of the most famous statements of wisdom comes from Dr. Johnson, the eminent man of letters of the eighteenth century England who wrote Dictionary of the English Language, Lives ...
Read More »Sunshine Makers
These articles will cite famous advice, wise proverbs, and prudent counsel as they appear in the classics of literature, in the words of famous characters from the good and great ...
Read More »Classics of Family Life
The Cottage at Bantry Bay, Francie on the Run, and Pegeen are charming, wholesome, fun-filled tales of Catholic family life in 1940s Ireland that are humorous and heartwarming. In these ...
Read More »