From Film to Novel My taste in fiction is quite naive: If it can’t be adapted into a great motion picture, I don’t read it. For this reason, I have not read any of Dickens’s novels, as none of the movie adaptions impressed me enough to read the original. The only exception is the movie “Scrooge” (1951) starring Alastair Sim. I watched it for many years around Christmas, almost as […]
Read moreLatest Post
Moralia: Why Salt Was Regarded As Divine
In Iliad, Homer writes, “He sprinkled with salt divine”. Plato says in Timaeus that by the custom of mankind salt is regarded as of all substances the one most favoured by the gods. Egyptian priests, on the other hand, made it a point of religion to abstain completely from salt. Perhaps the Egyptians from motives of purity avoid salt on account of the aphrodisiac properties sometimes attributed to it. But […]
Read more“The Transcendentalist” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into three sects: 1. The Materialist: “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” 2. The Transcendentalist: “Though we should soar into the heavens, though we should sink into the abyss, we never go out […]
Read more“Moralia: On Fate and Divine Justice” by Plutarch
Divine Justice Transcends Time and Space The notion of justice presupposes the persistence of identity, not only of individual, but also of family, race and nation. An individual goes through many changes, from a newborn baby, to a child, an adult and an old man. How can one be responsible for his past action if he is not the same person who committed it? Although a family, race or nation […]
Read more“The Cloud Of Unknowing” by Anonymous
Perspectives on the Contemplative Life It is written in the Talmud, “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” Concerning the spirit, the only life that a man has the power to destroy or save is his own, then and only then is an entire world destroyed or saved […]
Read more“A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life” by William Law
William Law in this work reminds me of Leo Tolstoy in his late writings. Both of them write with a limpid style, both present moral arguments that are undeniably logical and rational, both make severe and incisive criticisms of Christendom, and not surprisingly, both were excommunicated. If a Christian reader tries to see things through Law’s eyes, he would find himself in a dream world, where people, himself included, live […]
Read more“Four Quartets: IV. Every Life a Poem” by T. S. Eliot
Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness, as a Chinese jar still Moves perpetually in its stillness. Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts, Not that only, but the co-existence, Or say that the end precedes the beginning, […]
Read more