I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what …
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water …
His art with nature’s workmanship at strife, As if the dead the living should exceed – William Shakespeare, from Venus and Adonis When I was studying Shakespeare in college we were reading Venus and Adonis aloud as a class together when my professor stopped the person reading his lines (the full …
I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine. – Elizabeth from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Recently I finished reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Perhaps you’ve read it or seen the film version with Keira Knightley (as of now I still have not …
The wise man is self-sufficient. – Seneca, “Letters from a Stoic” When I was in 10th grade I read for the first time passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s powerful essay “Self-Reliance.” In case you haven’t read it, or would like to read it again, you can find the entire essay …
An unintelligible multitude, A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign. – W.H. Auden from “The Shield of Achilles” When I was in college studying literature I took a course on Shakespeare with Professor David Brumble. He is a brilliant professor who inspired …
Count Lyov Nikolayevich Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a beautiful and fierce novel that recounts the lives of numerous Russian aristocrats both in peace and in war during the Napoleonic battles and the invasion of Russia. Within their various lives there is also an accounting of the cultural, intellectual, and …
Humans are a religious creature. We create worlds and cosmos and continually seek to answer and explain life, the unknown, the beyond. Whether we use actual religion or science or politics or a cult of personality or anything else, we will use something as our religion – our means by …
Just a few weeks ago I finally finished reading the great War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. And let me tell you it is an incredible work of monumental proportions. The project of this piece is massive and extends to all of humanity and into the most rigorous and infinitesimal …
