“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”
― The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
― The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
― Orthodoxy
― Orthodoxy
“The true goal for man is to be what he does. The worth of a religion is the worth of the individuals living it. A mitsvah, therefore, is not mere doing but an act that embraces both the doer and the deed. The means may be external, but the end is personal. Your deeds be pure, so that ye shall be holy.
A hero is he who is greater than his feats, and a pious man is he who is greater than his rituals. The deed is definite, yet the task is infinite.”
― God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism
A hero is he who is greater than his feats, and a pious man is he who is greater than his rituals. The deed is definite, yet the task is infinite.”
― God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism
“Freedom is not simple, for it always is involved with responsibility. The relation between freedom and responsibility is not a “balance” to be expediently adjusted by governments or citizens, who without both can have neither. I have quoted John Milton’s definition of freedom before, and I am going to quote it again, for it is complex and precise enough to have the force of an essential justice: “To be free,” Milton wrote, “is precisely the same thing as to be pious, wise, just, and temperate, careful of one’s own, abstinate from what is another’s and thence, in fine, magnanimous and brave.”
― Our Only World: Ten Essays
― Our Only World: Ten Essays
“To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”
― Orthodoxy
― Orthodoxy
Will’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Will’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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