“the thousand-yard stare...”
C.S. Crawford, The Four Deuces: A Korean War Story
“Will you permit the sacred fire of liberty, brought by your fathers from the venerable temples of Britain, to be quenched and trodden out on the simple altars they have raised?”
Joseph Howe [in appealing to a jury Halifax in 1835 to acquit him on libel charges because what he’d published was true even though at that time truth was not a defence in British law, which they did, thus engaging in “jury nullification” to uphold that liberty] in Dennis Gruending, ed., Great Canadian Speeches
“An After School Satan Club plans to begin offering activities to children at a Tennessee elementary school following Christmas break, officials said. The Satanic Temple plans to host the club at Chimneyrock Elementary School in Cordova, news outlets reported.... A flyer about the club says the Satanic Temple is a non-theistic religion that views Satan ‘as a literary figure who represents a metaphorical construct of rejecting tyranny and championing the human mind and spirit.’ It says it does not attempt to convert children to any religious ideology, but offers activities that ‘emphasize a scientific, rationalistic, non-superstitious worldview.’”
Associated Press December 13, 2023
“Monaco was, in Somerset Maugham’s unimprovable summation, ‘a sunny place for shady people’”.
The reference is to when Grace Kelly met Prince Rainier there, in Mark Steyn’s obituary of Prince Rainier in The Atlantic Monthly July-August 2005
“The true modern cowardice is that no one has the courage to pronounce truisms. Consequently the chief evil of all modern argument is that it will not begin, like Euclid, with the things that are quite obvious; Euclid is dull during the first four or five pages; not before the third book does he begin to become even feebly brilliant. In short, the characteristic modern controversy has this defect, that those partaking in it have not the courage to be dull, have not the courage to state the things which are only evident to some.”
G.K. Chesterton in the Morning Post Oct. 18, 1906, quoted in “Chesterton For Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 6 (July-August 2023)
“Current fashion among history teachers affirms, in the teeth of the evidence, that individuals count for little; that history’s iron laws are all but unaffected by them.”
The Making of Tyrants by Alan Bullock, quoted in The Economist July 20, 1991
“Our journalised world does not regard words as part of any connected argument, but as disconnected emotional epithets thrown at some object; the only question being whether it is an object of hatred or idolatry, and whether the things thrown are bombs or bouquets. Nobody thinks that anybody might possibly have another object, the object called truth, and try to reach it by thinking instead of throwing things.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted in Dale Ahlquist “Why is America not Normal? G.K.’s Weekly, Volume 13 March 14, 1031 – September 5, 1931” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 6 (July-August 2023)
“Irresolute men are sometimes very persistent in their undertakings, because if they gave up their design they would have to make a second resolution.”
“Leopardi” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail May 18, 2007