“How many men have sold their souls to be admired by fools?”
G. K. Chesterton in “Ring of Lovers” in The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond quoted in “Chesterton For Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #2 (Nov.-Dec. 2021)
“I personally view punditry as Nero’s art – playing the fiddle while Rome is burning – but, as the fine Australian commentator, Walter Murdoch, pointed out years ago: ‘If everyone had refrained from fiddling when Rome was burning, what would have become of the noble art of music? For when has Rome not been burning?’”
George Jonas in Ottawa Citizen June 24, 2006
“When men claimed scientific authority for their ignorance, and police support for their aggressive presumption, it is time for Mr Chesterton and all other men of sense to withstand them sturdily.”
George Bernard Shaw reviewing G.K. Chesterton’s 1922 Eugenics and Other Evils in The Nation. Shaw called it “a graver, harder book” than GKC’s other books, in a good way, and praised his “sledge-hammer directness” and taking a stand, according to Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #3 Jan.-Feb. 2022)
“If you’re in a dark and terrible place, and someone says, ‘You’re okay the way you are,’ you don’t know what to do about that. ‘No, I’m not. I’m having a terrible time. And I’m hopeless.’ Well, then what? That’s it? What do you want to tell a young person? ‘You’re 17. You’re okay the way you are.’ No, you’re not. You’ve got 60 years to be better. You could be incomparably better across multiple dimensions. And in pursuing that better, that’s where you’ll find the meaning in your life. And that will give you the antidote to the suffering.”
Jordan Peterson on Instagram March 29, 2022 [https://www.instagram.com/p/CbQwpO6Mekq/]
The world “continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords.”
Lord Birkenhead (F.E. Smith) in 1923 according to a writer whose name I did not record, if the piece was signed, in National Review November 15, 1993
“Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the Unknowable. But there it sits, nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.”
H.L. Mencken, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail April 6, 2009
“As the historian Forrest McDonald pointed out, Filmer never persuaded anyone by eloquence or logic, since he possessed neither.”
Richard Brookheiser in National Review February 22, 1999 [Filmer being the 17th-century English Tory essayist Robert Filmer, the target of John Locke’s now mostly unread First Treatise of Government, which is now mostly unread in significant measure because it demolished Filmer so completely that nobody now remembers him]
“As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence.”
James Madison, quoted by Christopher Buckley in National Review November 22, 1999