“And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination – you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.... Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency – the devotion to efficiency.”
Marlow, in Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness
“This is what ordered liberty gives us: a game with rules, making it understandable, playable, and enjoyable, but also infinitely complex, filled with endless variation and diversity. But without rules governing the play and interactions on or off the board, it would be meaningless. Likewise, when talking about freedom in a biblical sense, we are talking about the freedom to do as we are called to do. There are rules for our good, to give us the freedom to carry out our responsibilities, the duties of our offices and callings, willingly and faithfully. Lord Acton was correct: ‘Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do as we ought.’ And even more than that, freedom is living the way we were created to live, as image bearers of God.”
André Schutten and Michael Wagner, A Christian Citizenship Guide 2nd edition [following a surprisingly sensible chess analogy].
“The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023) – the context was a long-ago crisis in the affairs of the famous jeweler Tiffany’s.
“The reason we have sexual harassment is that we do not believe in chastity. In the end, the only way to discourage unwanted advances is to condemn immoral ones. To discredit sexual harassment, one must discredit sexual sin.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]
“There is nothing wrong with old ideas, so long as they are true. And there is nothing admirable about new ones, if they aren’t.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]
“For a delight in bustling about is not industry – it is only the restless energy of a hunted mind.”
Seneca Letter III
“I RECEIVED A LITTLE WHILE AGO a letter to which no name or address was attached, which touched me beyond expression. A great deal of it was too personal to treat of here, and for this reason especially I regret the concealment of its origin. But the more generally discussable part concerned itself chiefly with a query as to my meaning when I said in this paper something to this effect: ‘No one can be miserable who has known anything worth being miserable about.’ The remark was written as remarks in daily papers ought, in my opinion, to be written, in a wild moment; but it happens, nevertheless, to be more or less true. What I meant was that our attitude towards existence, if we have suffered deprivation, must always be conditioned by the fact that deprivation implies that existence has given us something of immense value. To say that we have lost in the lottery of existence is to say that we have gained: for existence gives us our money beforehand. It is quite impossible to imagine ourselves as really calling, as Huxley expressed it, the Cosmos to the bar.”
G.K. Chesterton “The Philosophy of Gratitude” reprinted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023) p. 5 [including start].
“Constantine, sometimes (Heaven knows why) called Constantine the Great, was emperor.”
Hendrik Willem van Loon The Story of Mankind