“An old cowhand in Colorado, learning that Jean Stafford was a writer, observed, ‘That’s real nice work, Jean. It’s something you can do in the shade.’”

Clifton Fadiman The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes

“Fr. Paul D. Scalia: ‘Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me.’ Perhaps we can hear in these words an invitation to couples to have more children. The young G.K. Chesterton once wrote a bit of doggerel that captures his love of the Christ-child and of childhood in general: ‘I would say to all parents/ Do you take things equally/ How do you know that you are not/ In the place of Joseph and Mary.’ Of course, those two things are profoundly related. Childhood wasn’t valued until God became a child. The ancient world didn’t have the same affection or sentimentality for children that we have. In both Aramaic and Greek, the word for child was the same as for servant. It’s not that the world thought children were delightful, and so God became a child. It’s rather that by becoming a child, God sanctified childhood and children.”

Start of email from The Catholic Thing Sept. 22, 2024

“She’s always late. Her ancestors arrived on the June Flower.”

Top 20 Internet Tag Lines in Gilbert! Vol. 4 #8 (July/August 2001)

“Our educational authorities have already made sure that the system is rigid without making sure that it is right. They have already achieved universality but not unity. They have arranged to teach history without considering what history teaches; they have obtained powers of compulsion for teaching the truth to everybody; and then, looking into their own minds, have found that the truth is not in them.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News June 12, 1920 as a header quotation on Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)

“Words matter. They are the vessels that carry moral meaning across generations. When they are stretched beyond recognition, they do not become more powerful; they become useless. That is why the recent spectacle surrounding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – now casually accused of committing ‘genocide’ – demands serious attention. Not because the charge is credible, but because it reveals how far public discourse has descended into moral inflation and historical amnesia. The most disturbing element of this phenomenon is not found on fringe social-media platforms, but in mainstream conversation—amplified by prominent voices and repeated without shame. When enforcement of immigration law in a constitutional democracy is labeled ‘genocide,’ the word itself ceases to mean what it once did. And that loss is not academic. It is catastrophic. The term genocide was coined to describe the deliberate, systematic annihilation of an entire people. It was meant to capture the unprecedented horror of the Holocaust and other acts of mass extermination. It refers to death camps, mass graves, starvation, forced sterilization, and the total erasure of a people’s existence. It does not refer to border enforcement, deportation proceedings, or the execution of court-ordered removal. Yet today, this distinction is treated as pedantic – almost offensive. Emotion has replaced definition. Outrage has replaced precision…. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did not merely echo the claim that ICE enforcement constitutes ‘genocide.’ He compared the fear of young people whose families are in the country illegally to Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager hunted by the Nazi state and ultimately murdered in Bergen-Belsen. This is not historical illiteracy; it is moral obscenity. Anne Frank was hiding from a government committed to the total extermination of her people. ICE is enforcing immigration law in a constitutional democracy – often against individuals who have already received due process and removal orders. To equate lawful immigration enforcement with the machinery of Auschwitz is to empty the Holocaust of its meaning and to weaponize Jewish suffering for contemporary political theater. It is precisely this collapse of moral scale—where everything disliked becomes ‘genocide’ and every fear becomes Anne Frank—that makes serious conversation impossible and turns historical memory into a blunt instrument rather than a solemn responsibility. This is not merely offensive to Jews. It is dangerous to society at large. When the Holocaust becomes a metaphor rather than a historical event, it loses its power to warn. If Anne Frank is everyone, then she is no one.”

The Times of Israel blog by Benjamin Blech [the Times explicitly takes no authorship or responsibility for its blogs] Feb. 5, 2026 [https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/when-ice-became-the-gestapo/].

“At the rate we’re going, they’re going to cancel shampoo so bald people don’t get offended.”

Emailed by a friend May 7, 2024 without attribution.

“Let me talk to him. I speak idiot fluently.”

Ned Seagoon re Eccles in the Goon Show episodeThe Battle of Spion Kop.

“There is no easy method of learning difficult things. The method is to close the door, give out that you are not at home, and work.”

Joseph de Maistre, originally encountered long ago in what seemed to be a web page printout from Frank magazine but supported by https://quotefancy.com/quote/1308968/Joseph-de-Maistre-There-is-no-easy-method-of-learning-difficult-things-The-method-is-to.