Winter: A Time for Noble Joy

Winter: A Time for Noble Joy

What does it take to form virtue—or to ‘educate’ in the most important sense? This perennial question concerns all of us, at all stages of life. Aristotle offers a simple but surprising principle that should focus us on what we’re doing at home in these winter days....
A Moment That Says It All

A Moment That Says It All

It’s a stunning moment in one of the great books: Jim Hawkins doesn’t jump the stockade. The other day when reading Treasure Island aloud with the family, I fairly wanted to jump out of my skin when we came to it. For the fortunate hearer, a moment like this can...
Lent is For Learning to Taste Things

Lent is For Learning to Taste Things

It might seem we cannot change how things taste to us. But our wants—which determine our pleasures and pains—come under our control. It is our challenge and our glory to strive to bring our wants and tastes into conformity with the truth. Such is the ultimate...
3 Keys to Having Good Fun

3 Keys to Having Good Fun

Having truly good fun is a virtue. This might seem to undermine the very notion of fun by making it a serious matter. Yet here we can discover once again that right-thinking always brings out the true richness of human life. Thomas Aquinas has a subtle and beautiful...
To Eat Well: 2 Arts and 2 Virtues

To Eat Well: 2 Arts and 2 Virtues

So much of what it is to be human is at stake in how we eat. No wonder we need several arts and virtues really to do it well. Thomas Aquinas has much to say about eating. A starting point is how the art of medicine, rightly understood and practiced, should have a key...

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