“Many people today spend their lives in the really delightful pursuit of kickable objects.”
G.K. Chesterton in Acton Gazette December 2, 1910, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)
“We all know the story of how Herod, alarmed at some rumour of mysterious rival, remembered the wild gesture of the capricious despots of Asia and ordered a massacre of suspects of the new generation of the populace. Everyone knows the story; but not everyone has perhaps noted its place in the story of the strange religions of man. Not everybody has seen the significance even of its very contrast with the Corinthian columns and Roman pavement of that conquered and superficially civilised world. Only, as the purpose in his dark spirit began to show and shine in the eyes of the Idumean, a seer might perhaps have seen something like a great grey ghost that looked over his shoulder; have seen behind him filling the dome of night and hovering for the last time over history, that vast and fearful face that was Moloch of the Carthaginians; awaiting his last tribute from a ruler of the races of Shem. The demons also, in that first festival of Christmas, feasted after their own fashion.”
G.K. Chesterton in “The God in the Cave” in The Everlasting Man, quoted in “GKC on Scripture • Conducted by Peter Floriani” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023).
“Honesty is never solemn; it is only hypocrisy that can be that. Honesty always laughs, because things are so laughable.”
G.K. Chesterton “A Plea for Hasty Journalism” in The Apostle and the Wild Ducks, quoted in “Can’t You Take A Joke?” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)
C.S. “Lewis grew more outspoken in his criticism of the government in his letters to his American benefactors as the Argentine crisis grew and meat became even more scarce. He chaffed against government interference of the most paternalistic style. In the face of severe food for shortages, one government minister insisted that things were much better under government rationing. Whereas families once bought the kinds of foods they liked, under rationing they were forced to eat ‘a properly balanced diet’ by government standards. He commented to [Vera] Matthews that it might do the country good to see a few government ministers ‘dangling from a lamppost in Whitehall’. When the government realized that people were ordering groceries from Ireland, the Customs officials stopped the practice.”
Harry Lee Poe The Completion of C.S. Lewis [showing that there’s nothing like actual experience of living under patronizing big government to turn someone vaguely leftist by cultural disposition into a raging libertarian]
“The two most abundant things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.”
Harlan Ellison, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail May 8, 2001
“‘Tis a lesson you should heed,/ Try, try again;/ If at first you don’t succeed,/ Try, try again; Then your courage should appear,/ For, if you will persevere,/ You will conquer, never fear;/ Try, try again.”
Unsourced, complete, in William Bennett The Book of Virtues
“There are some people who would hardly accept any direct happiness, unless you sprang it on them as a surprise.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted without further attribution as header quotation on John Walker “Banishing Trolls” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2023)
“The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.”
British jurist Sir George Jessel, quoted by Katherine Gay in I think the Financial Post from early 1994 (given me by a colleague without precise attribution)