“If there are ghastly things to be faced the only thing we can do is make it glorious to face them.”
GKC in New Witness May 17, 1918 quoted in Gilbert magazine Vol. 9 #2 (Oct.-Dec. 2005)
In my latest Epoch Times column, I say 2023 feels like one of those years where trouble was plainly a-brewin’ but the storm had not yet really broken.
“I pronounce it as certain that there was never yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.”
Benjamin Franklin quoted in The Patriot Post Founders’ Quote Daily September 25, 2006 from Federalist.com (and sourced to “Benjamin Franklin (The Busy-body, No. 3, 18 February 1728) Reference: The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Bigelow, ed., vol. 1 (350).”)
“Previous civilizations have degenerated. Previous ages have marched into the dark not knowing that they were marching into the dark. But in any previous time, were artists, scholars, and thinkers so eager to explain that degeneration was really progress?”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 4, 2023 (https://www.undergroundthomist.org/antipasto)
“In the name of commonsense let it be remembered that Shakespeare lived before the time when unsuccessful poets thought it poetical to be decadent and unsuccessful soldiers thought it military to be silent. Men like Sidney and Raleigh and Essex could have fought as well as Macbeth and could have ranted as well as Macbeth. Why should Shakespeare shrink from making a great general talk poetry when half the great generals of his time actually wrote great poetry?”
“The Macbeths,” in G.K. Chesterton Brave New Family
In my latest Loonie Politics column I write to Saint Nick saying never mind peace on Earth or fancy toys, I just want a Canadian government that isn’t smugly incompetent on every file.
“Whether written out somewhere or merely a collection in the back of your mind, you likely have a to-do list of things you want to get done. After all, life is busy and there often isn’t time to do everything you would like. But do you have a to-don’t list? Things that you’re planning not to do? A recent article in the Financial Times points to the often-neglected importance of the art of not doing. In the desire to be productive and accomplish goals, it’s easy to always focus your attention on what to do, rather than on what you know you want to avoid. As the author points out, however, ‘sometimes the absence of bad is more important than the presence of good.’ After all, history is littered with countless examples in which the feeling that something must be done has won out over the patient wariness of avoiding doing something wrong to disastrous effect.”
E-mail from Charalambos Dritsas of IG Wealth Management March 3, 2023
Troy Media has also now published my review for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy of Stephen Bown’s exciting Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada.