[Warning: The following post contains coarse language, nudity and explicit sexuality. Reader’s discretion is strongly advised.] Eppia, a Senator’s Wife Oblivious of her home and husband and sister, she disregarded her fatherland and shamelessly deserted her wailing children and, what’s more amazing, Paris and the Games. But although as a little girl she had slept in great opulence on her family down in cradles with flounces, she scorned the sea. […]
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“Satires” by Persius
The Dissolute He is paralysed with vice, and thick fat has gown over his liver. He has no sense of guilt or of what he’s lost. He’s sunk so deep that he makes no more bubbles on the surface. You’re still snoring and your lolling head with its joint unhinged is yawning yesterday’s yawn, with your jaws completely unstitched. Is there something you’re heading for, a target for your bow? […]
Read more“Tolstoy and the Cult of Simplicity” by G. K. Chesterton
[Warning: The following review may be strongly biased. I read Chesterton’s Heretics and Orthodoxy a long time ago, but retained nothing from them, except that he had sharp wit and good sense of humour; On the other hand, I’m a fan of Tolstoy and read the majority of his works] If Chesterton had reviewed his essay on Tolstoy in a more reflective mood, he would have retracted it. It’s a […]
Read moreKant: Critique of Practical Reason
I’ve enjoyed reading Kant so far, not because of any originality of his idea, but because of the clarity and architecture of his logic. To me it’s like listening to the music of Bach in a way. Freedom Freedom is the ratio essendi of the moral law, while the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom. For had not the moral law been previously distinctly thought in our reason, […]
Read more“Plays” by Leo Tolstoy
“The Power of Darkness” is perhaps one of the darkest of Tolstoy’s works, because it depicts the most hideous of human nature. One can hardly believe that the characters are human beings, not some wild beasts, or those driven mad by the gods in the Greek tragedies. C.S.Lewis might have been inspired by “The First Distiller” in writing “The Screwtape Letters”, as it relates the story of how an imp […]
Read more“Bethink Yourselves” by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy wrote “Bethink Yourselves” in protest of the Russo-Japanese war, the first of a series of global wars in the 20th century. It happened six years before Tolstoy’s death and ten years before World War I. The title is a reference to verses in the Gospels (Mark 1:5, Luke 13:5, etc), which are alternatively translated as “Repent”. This article and his treatise “The Kingdom of God is Within You” are […]
Read more“On the Significance of Science and Art” by Leo Tolstoy
Ever since men have been in existence, they have been in the habit of deducing, from all pursuits, the expressions of various branches of learning concerning the destiny and the welfare of man, and the expression of this knowledge has been art in the strict sense of the word. Ever since men have existed, there have been those who were peculiarly sensitive and responsive to the doctrine regarding the destiny […]
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