“By virtue of his status as the Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge, the Nobel Committee invited Lewis to submit a nomination for the Nobel Prize for literature in 1961. Lewis had several possible candidates on his mind: E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and his old friend Tolkien. It probably did not take much reflection to settle on Tolkien. Lewis’s letters of the previous ten years are strewn with references to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings prior to and after its publication, and his commendation of it to anyone who could read. However Tolkien might have felt about Lewis after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and his marriage to Joy, Lewis continued to admire and miss his friend. The Nobel Committee did not agree with Lewis, preferring to present the prize in 1961 to Ivo Andrić of Yugoslavia.”

Harry Lee Poe The Completion of C.S. Lewis (and I defy anyone to name a work by “Ivo Andrić of Yugoslavia” or, indeed, any recent recepient of this supposedly prestigious award).

C.S. “Lewis grew more outspoken in his criticism of the government in his letters to his American benefactors as the Argentine crisis grew and meat became even more scarce. He chaffed against government interference of the most paternalistic style. In the face of severe food for shortages, one government minister insisted that things were much better under government rationing. Whereas families once bought the kinds of foods they liked, under rationing they were forced to eat ‘a properly balanced diet’ by government standards. He commented to [Vera] Matthews that it might do the country good to see a few government ministers ‘dangling from a lamppost in Whitehall’. When the government realized that people were ordering groceries from Ireland, the Customs officials stopped the practice.”

Harry Lee Poe The Completion of C.S. Lewis [showing that there’s nothing like actual experience of living under patronizing big government to turn someone vaguely leftist by cultural disposition into a raging libertarian]

“The two most abundant things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.”

Harlan Ellison, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail May 8, 2001

“‘Tis a lesson you should heed,/ Try, try again;/ If at first you don’t succeed,/ Try, try again; Then your courage should appear,/ For, if you will persevere,/ You will conquer, never fear;/ Try, try again.”

Unsourced, complete, in William Bennett The Book of Virtues

“There are some people who would hardly accept any direct happiness, unless you sprang it on them as a surprise.”

G.K. Chesterton, quoted without further attribution as header quotation on John Walker “Banishing Trolls” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2023)

“The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.”

British jurist Sir George Jessel, quoted by Katherine Gay in I think the Financial Post from early 1994 (given me by a colleague without precise attribution)

“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.”

“Ideas and values, not location or weather, were what distinguished the Greeks.”

Victor Davis Hanson The Wars of the Ancient Greeks