“He took a Nez approach. As in the opposite of Zen.”
One of mine, from November 20, 2005
“Human beings are neither souls alone, nor bodies alone, but embodied souls. Since the laws of our bodies are constitutive elements of our being, we don’t diminish ourselves by honoring them – we would alienate ourselves by not honoring them. They aren’t shackles, but real aspects of our embodied personhood – inheritances, not encumbrances; enrichments, not impoverishments; not things to be struggled against, but things to be cherished as gifts.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]
“In the synod, there is no place for ideology.”
Pope Francis, quoted in National Post September 5, 2023 [which I quote not because I approve but because it’s a common and important error: he’s against “ideology”, but how would he define it as opposed to actual thought except perhaps as the kind of thought he disagrees with?]
“Man is governed not only by what he thinks but by what he chooses to think about.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News May 11, 1912, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008).
“How odd it is that the things we do spontaneously are usually bad for us. Doesn’t that suggest that something has gone wrong with our nature? I think so. Please notice that I am asking whether the condition of man’s nature has changed. I am not asking whether our nature itself has changed, for if that had happened, then either the being before the change wasn’t man – or it was, but we aren’t.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]
“No one can invent new values or a new morality. What appear to be new ones are merely the results of cherry-picking elements of the ‘old’ morality, exaggerating them, and ignoring all of its other elements. This was [C.S.] Lewis’s great insight.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]
“I’ve written in this blog numerous times about the ‘revenge of conscience’. Conscience wreaks this revenge in a particularly spectacular way in the domain of sex. We aren’t really shameless; rather, because of our shame, we make excuses. People on the left make excuses for their shameful practices by saying that now all perversions are okay (in fact, they aren’t perversions). People on the right implausibly say ‘No, only my shameful practice is okay. Yours isn’t.’ Is it any wonder that the liberal dog is winning this fight?”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]
“There is a kind of work which any man can do, but from which many men shrink, generally because it is very hard work, sometimes because they fear it will lead them whither they do not wish to go. It is called thinking.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News July 10, 1915, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008)