Tolstoy on being a doer of the word

I put this up for the next person looking to track it to source.  Christian doesn't hesitate over the date (1847):

"It is easier to write ten volumes of philosophy than to put a single precept into practice."

Leo Tolstoy, Diary entry dated 17 March 1846 or 1847, trans. C. J. Hogarth & A. Sirnis.  The diaries of Leo Tolstoy:  youth, 1847-1852, trans. C. J. Hogarth & A. Sirnis (London:  J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.; New York:  E.P. Dutton & Co.; Paris:  J. M. Dent & Fils, 1917), 2.


"It's easier to write ten volumes of philosophy than to put one single principle into practice."

Leo Tolstoy, Diary entry dated 17 March 1847, trans. R. F. Christian.  Tolstoy's diaries, Volume I, 1847-1894, ed. & trans. R. F. Christian (London:  The Athlone Press, 1985), 4.

A library is an act of faith

Une bibliothèque est un acte de foi
Des générations ténébreuses encore
Qui rendent dans la nuit témoignage à l'aurore.

Victor Hugo, "À qui la faute?", L'année terrible, juin [1871] VIII ((Paris:  Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1880 [1872]), 234 (234-236)).  I was put onto this by Edmund de Waal, The hare with amber eyes:  a family's century of art and loss (New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 193.  "À qui la faute?" has been rendered into English as "The crime."

On the one hand, on the other II

"[Epiphanius] also said, 'The acquisition of Christian books is necessary for those who can use them.  For the mere sight of these books renders us less inclined to sin, and incites us to believe more firmly in righteousness.'"

"Abba Theodore of Pherme had acquired three good books.  He came to Abba Macarius and said to him, 'I have three excellent books from which I derive profit; the brethren also make use of them and derive profit from them.  Tell me what I ought to do:  keep them for my use and that of the brethren, or sell them and give the money to the poor?'  The old man answered him in this way, 'Your actions are good; but it is best of all to possess nothing.'  Hearing that, he went and sold his books and gave the money for them to the poor."

"A brother said to Abba Serapion, 'Give me a word.'  The old man said to him, 'What shall I say to you?  You have taken the living of widows and orphans and put it on your shelves.'  For he saw them full of books."

The desert Christian: sayings of the desert fathers: the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1980 [1975]), 58 (lacking in the systematic collection), 73 (VI.7 =SC 387, p. 318), 227 (VI.16 =SC 387, p. 324).

Fool me twice

"The same old man helped some thieves when they were stealing.  When they had taken away what was inside his cell, Abba Euprepius saw that they had left his stick and he was sorry.  So he took it and ran after them to give it to them.  But the thieves did not want to take it, fearing that something would happen to them if they did.  So he asked someone he met who was going the same way to give the stick to them."

"Abba Daniel said that when Abba Arsenius was at Scetis, there was a monk there who used to steal the possessions of the old men.  Abba Arsenius took him into his cell in order to convert him and to give the old men some peace.  He said to him, 'Everything you want I will get for you, only do not steal.'  So he gave him gold, coins, clothes and everything he needed.  But the brother began to steal again.  So the old men, seeing that he had not stopped, drove him away saying, 'If there is a brother who commits a sin through weakness, one must bear it, but if he steals, drive him away, for it is hurtful to his soul and troubles all those who live in the neighborhood.'"

     The desert Christian: sayings of the desert fathers:  the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY:  Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1980 [1975]), 62 (lacking in the systematic collection), 52 (X.23 =SC 474, p. 28).

Polanyi on the indispensability of submission

"An art which cannot be specified in detail cannot be transmitted by prescription, since no prescription for it exists. It can be passed on only by example from master to apprentice. This restricts the range of diffusion to that of personal contacts, and we find accordingly that craftsmanship tends to survive in closely circumscribed local traditions. Indeed, the diffusion of crafts from one country to another can often be traced to the migration of groups of craftsmen, as that of the Huguenots driven from France by the repeal of the Edict of Nantes under Louis XIV. Again, while the articulate contents of science are successfully taught all over the world in hundreds of new universities, the unspecifiable art of scientific research has not yet penetrated to many of these. The regions of Europe in which the scientific method first originated 400 years ago are scientifically still more fruitful today, in spite of their impoverishment, than several overseas areas where much more money is available for scientific research. Without the opportunity offered to young scientists to serve an apprenticeship in Europe, and without the migration of European scientists to the new countries, research centres overseas could hardly ever have made much headway.
"It follows that an art which has fallen into disuse for the period of a generation is altogether lost. There are hundreds of examples of this to which the process of mechanization is continually adding new ones. These losses are usually irretrievable. It is pathetic to watch the endless efforts—equpped with microscopy and chemistry, with mathematics and electronics—to reproduce a single violin of the kind the half-literate Stradivarius turned out as a matter of routine more than 200 years ago.
"To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyse and account in detail for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explictly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another. A society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to tradition."

Michael Polanyi, Personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy I.4.3 ((London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973 [1962, 1958]), 53).

"Where there is no Election, there is no history."

Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, The promise, trans. Rebecca Howell Balinski, Msgr. Richard Malone, Jean Duchesne, & Rivka Karplus (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007), 104.  I have not read this book, but was put on to it by Pierre d'Ornellas, "L'évêque et l'histoire," Communio: revue catholique internationale 33, no. 3 (mai-juin 2008):  58 (53-62).  The material on election that follows this in the article and book appears on p. 32 in the English translation.

Balthasar on the doctrines of election and predestination

"When God's universal plan for the world, for its creation as for its redemption, thus definitively moves into view, it becomes impossible to interpret the doctrine of election in the Old and New Covenants, with their clear preference for one individual vis-à-vis others, other than as a moment within this universal plan. . . . Israel is called for the sake of the Gentiles, and this call of Israel becomes a model for the call ('calling out,' ecclesia) of the Church, which takes place for the sake of the world, and thus also for every personal call within the Church, which without exception demonstrates this same ecclesial figure of meaning:  to be called for the sake of those who (for the time being) are not called.  This biblical-patristic and modern understanding leaves behind once and for all every theology of individual predestination (the most consistent form of which was the theology of double predestination), according to which the one chosen is chosen primarily for his own sake, so much so that he must stand amazed and trembling before the mystery of others not-being-chosen (perhaps even being rejected)—whether these others be many or few.
"We can and must formulate this very simply:  everyone who is called in a biblical sense is called for the sake of those who [for the time being] are not called."

Hans Urs von Balthasar, "Vocation," trans. Michelle K. Borras, Communio: international Catholic review 37, no. 1 (Spring 2010):  113 (111-128).