Our lives are marked by reversals and recognitions for which we are rarely prepared. That change will come is certain, whether on the stage or in your home. The only question is how you will receive it when it comes. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, [...]
The world is often unkind to women, using them as pawns in a masculine game of war and power and possession. But these wrongs will not be righted by inviting women to participate in the same game. They will be righted only when the voice of the feminine is allowed to be heard: in the [...]
On this earth, there is nothing more firm, more noble, more intransigent than the heroic character. I encourage you, children of the twenty-first century, to respect such heroes, even as you fear them and pray that your fate will not be like theirs. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great [...]
The people of your age, just like the people of my own, want to cling to one of two false ideals: that we have no real choice; that we can choose but that our choices are simple, straightforward, and easily revoked. But neither is true to the deep reality that we are moral, ethical beings [...]
O, ye self-protective children of the twenty-first century, I hope you will see that suffering can be redemptive, that it can bridge the gap between where we are and where we hope to be. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages [...]
Justice is that which breaks us out of the cycle of vengeance. It achieves a higher vision that considers motives (and not just actions), causes (and not just effects), purposes (and not just naked facts). The triumph of justice does not signify the total defeat of vengeance, but its transformation into something beneficent. Author’s Introduction: [...]
Dr. Louis Markos explains how the problem in today's education is not that virtue is forgotten, but that only certain "pseudo-virtues" are being taught. We're raising a generation of people who say, "Well, yeah, I do sleep around. But I recycle cans and so it's okay." We've thrown out the sins against morality and replaced [...]
Author's Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages had been given the gift, not only to peer into the twenty-first century, but to correspond with us who live in that most confusing and rudderless of centuries. Had it been in their power [...]
There is dignity and value in work. You who live in America once knew this. You did not think lesser of a man because he got his hands dirty with honest toil. To the contrary, you thought it a grand thing to build and to create. But all that has changed... Author’s Introduction: Imagine if [...]
I have read your books, and I have discovered that many of you believe that people are products of their environment. How can you believe such things, and yet deny altogether the influence of the past? Nature may give us robust health or leave us scarred, but her traces upon us are minor things compared [...]
Oh, dear sons of the twenty-first century, do not balk at those who call you to live up to your father’s reputation. Do not define yourself against him, as so many of your age have done. If you do, you will dash yourselves on the rocks and miss out on your greater calling... Author’s Introduction: [...]
You teach your students that the men of the past looked upon their wives as chattel, that they saw them as possessions rather than as people of value and worth. How deeply mistaken you are; how far from the truth... Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient [...]
Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages had been given the gift, not only to peer into the twenty-first century, but to correspond with us who live in that most confusing and rudderless of centuries. Had it been in their power [...]
Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages had been given the gift, not only to peer into the twenty-first century, but to correspond with us who live in that most confusing and rudderless of centuries. Had it been in their power [...]