James “Madison was the Father of the Constitution, Architect of the Bill of Rights, and the only Secretary of State never to have left the country. The oldest of 12 children, he could read and write in seven languages. He attended the College of New Jersey (which became Princeton) instead of William and Mary – where Jefferson went and got all those Scottish Enlightenment Ideas.”
Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #3 (Jan.-Feb. 2024)
“Without freedom of speech, we would not know who the idiots are.”
Emailed without attribution by a friend May 28, 2024
“The modern laxity of language has had a great deal to do with the ultimate laxity of conduct.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly July 4, 1931 quoted in “More About Language” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)
“Many people today spend their lives in the really delightful pursuit of kickable objects.”
G.K. Chesterton in Acton Gazette December 2, 1910, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)
“We all know the story of how Herod, alarmed at some rumour of mysterious rival, remembered the wild gesture of the capricious despots of Asia and ordered a massacre of suspects of the new generation of the populace. Everyone knows the story; but not everyone has perhaps noted its place in the story of the strange religions of man. Not everybody has seen the significance even of its very contrast with the Corinthian columns and Roman pavement of that conquered and superficially civilised world. Only, as the purpose in his dark spirit began to show and shine in the eyes of the Idumean, a seer might perhaps have seen something like a great grey ghost that looked over his shoulder; have seen behind him filling the dome of night and hovering for the last time over history, that vast and fearful face that was Moloch of the Carthaginians; awaiting his last tribute from a ruler of the races of Shem. The demons also, in that first festival of Christmas, feasted after their own fashion.”
G.K. Chesterton in “The God in the Cave” in The Everlasting Man, quoted in “GKC on Scripture • Conducted by Peter Floriani” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023).
“Honesty is never solemn; it is only hypocrisy that can be that. Honesty always laughs, because things are so laughable.”
G.K. Chesterton “A Plea for Hasty Journalism” in The Apostle and the Wild Ducks, quoted in “Can’t You Take A Joke?” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)
“It helps a lot, with two people as much together as he and I were, if they understand each other. He understood that I was too strong-minded to add another word unless he told me to, and I understood that he was too pigheaded to tell me to.”
Archie Goodwin’s internal monologue himself and Nero Wolfe in Rex Stout The Final Deduction
“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).