“I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: Ignore it until it revolts.”
“Barbara Kingsolver American novelist (1955- )” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail Nov. 11, 2012
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Crack-Up [according to https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/64918-the-test-of-a-first-rate-intelligence-is-the-ability-to] [and one of those I don’t agree with, but widespread elite conviction that it is true helps explain the mess we’re in today]
In my latest National Post column I say the best way to get universities to stop promoting malevolent radicalism and start teaching again, and to promote actual social justice as well, is to privatize them and see what kind of education the young adults who will supposedly benefit from it are actually willing to pay full price for.
“It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.”
Ham Gamgee quoted by his son Sam in J.R.R. Tolkien The Two Towers
“‘It is wrong to proselytize among people who have a religious faith,’ says [UofT professor emeritus of comparative religion, William] Oxtoby. ‘No one has the moral right to tell someone they can’t find salvation without Christianity.’”
Maclean’s January 20, 2003 [And approvingly, of course, about an upsurge in violence against Christian missionaries, proving once again Ronald Knox’s jibe that studying comparative religion is the best way to become comparatively religious]
“‘Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.’ Nathaniel Hawthorne American writer (1804-64)”
“Nathaniel Hawthorne American writer (1804-64)” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail February 6, 2013
“There are indeed a large number of young people who sincerely think that their spirit will be the spirit of the future. That is why they are all so depressed.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly July 21, 1928 quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #6 (July/August 2022)
“A South American idol was made as ugly as possible, as a Greek image was made as beautiful as possible. They were seeking the secret of power, by working backwards against their own nature and the nature of things. There was always a sort of yearning to carve at last, in gold or granite or the dark red timber of the forests, a face at which the sky itself would break like a cracked mirror.”
G.K. Chesterton in “The Demons and the Philosophers” in The Everlasting Man, quoted in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #6 (July/August 2022)