“For as Chesterton remarked, you cannot introduce anarchy into the intellect without also introducing anarchy into the commonwealth.”
Link Byfield in British Columbia Report November 17, 1997
“The worst of using strong language is that it produces weak language.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News June 28, 1926 quoted in “More About Language” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)
“Ladborough discovered that Lewis got on well with the college servants, who respected and admired him as a person without realizing that he was, in Ladborough’s words, ‘a great man.’ They called him a real gentleman, for he seemed to care about them. This manner of his reflects his greatness. He was not great because of the books he wrote; he wrote the kind of books he wrote because he was great.”
Harry Lee Poe The Completion of C.S. Lewis
James “Madison was the Father of the Constitution, Architect of the Bill of Rights, and the only Secretary of State never to have left the country. The oldest of 12 children, he could read and write in seven languages. He attended the College of New Jersey (which became Princeton) instead of William and Mary – where Jefferson went and got all those Scottish Enlightenment Ideas.”
Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #3 (Jan.-Feb. 2024)
“Without freedom of speech, we would not know who the idiots are.”
Emailed without attribution by a friend May 28, 2024
“The modern laxity of language has had a great deal to do with the ultimate laxity of conduct.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly July 4, 1931 quoted in “More About Language” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)
“In 100 years, we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college.”
Joe Sobran quoted “In the last issue of Gilbert” by David Deavel, according to Pamela Patnode “The Art of Language” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2023); she added “The observation rings true today, and it has scriptural significance.”
“Think enough and you won’t know anything.”
Kenneth Patchen, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go