“The greatest blessings we receive in life are undeserved. For example, I didn’t do anything to deserve good parents. On the other hand, it is not unjust for a person to have such a blessing, and it is not an act of justice to try to erase it. What justice requires is gratitude for blessings received. What charity requires is trying to act in a way that blessings of the same kind may be more widely enjoyed.”

J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]

“There is no better proof of human vanity than to consider the causes and effects of love, because the whole universe can be changed by it. Cleopatra’s nose.”

Pascal Pensées

In my latest Epoch Times column I say the death of Rex Murphy is a terrible loss especially because we have also lost the kind of place he held in our national life.

In my latest Epoch Times column, I condemn Ontario public-sector unions who support pro-Hamas protests, which is not merely a violation of their mandate but also a gross affront to their supposedly progressive values.

“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]

“The only shadow he cast was by artificial light, and he looked it.”

Mike Hammer’s internal monologue in Mickey Spillane My Gun is Quick [regarding the pimp Cobbie Bennett]

“One who has been unable to trust his father has a much more difficult time learning to trust the One from whom all fathers take their name.”

J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]

“Earth is full. Go home.”

One of the “Expressions for women under stress” found on the Internet, in Globe & Mail March 16, 2001