BRIEF
Daily brief - Thu May 14 2026
What part of you does this passage make visible that you would rather keep hidden?
Theme: shadow · card 1/4 · 2026-05-14
If we admit that evil is an essential part of our being and the key to the interpretation of our life, we load ourselves down with a difficulty that has always proved burdensome in philosophies of religion. Theism, whenever it has erected itself into a systematic philosophy of the universe, has shown a reluctance to let God be anything less than All‐in‐All.
— William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
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What single decision does this passage make harder to keep avoiding?
Theme: direction · card 2/4 · 2026-05-14
“Hunc saltem everso juvenem succurrere seclo, Ne prohibete.” [“Forbid not, at least, that this young man repair this ruined age.” --Virgil, Georg., i. 500. Montaigne probably refers to Henry, king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV.] What has become of the old precept, “That soldiers ought more to fear their chief than the enemy”?--[Valerius Maximus, Ext. 2.]--and of that wonderful example, that an orchard being enclosed within the precincts of a camp of the Roman army, was seen at their dislodgment the next day in the same condition, not an apple, though ripe and delicious, being pulled off, but all left to the possessor?
— Michel de Montaigne, Essays of Michel de Montaigne (Complete)
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If you could only carry one sentence from this passage into the rest of your life, which would it be, and what would you have to give up to live by it?
Theme: core_values · card 3/4 · 2026-05-14
On being asked why he permitted the animal thus to dirty his clothes, Towianski replied: ‘This dog, whom I am now meeting for the first time, has shown a great fellow‐ feeling for me, and a great joy in my recognition and acceptance of his greetings. Were I to drive him off, I should wound his feelings and do him a moral injury.
— William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
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What would the writer say about the same behaviour you have repeated three times this month?
Theme: patterns · card 4/4 · 2026-05-14
He saluted with his full glass as a signal of parting, emptying it, and then flinging it against the door in the rear wall. The others followed his example, consummating this symbolic action with all the solemnity of adepts. Justice was thus done the pleasure of stopping short--that royal pleasure which, though briefer, yet is more liberating than any other pleasure.
— Soren Kierkegaard, Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard
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