“If you believe in a principle, never damage it with poor expression.”
Engineer Charles Parson, on why they risked arrest by taking the steam turbine ship Turbinia through the big naval review for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee to show that this kind of engine was much faster, quoted on “Incredible Speed: Turbinia” [https://youtu.be/rcQN9UxEEcM?t=336].
“Nothing in politics, the famous British historian F.S. Oliver remarked, is sadder than the ‘man of sterling character whose genius is so antipathetic to the particular emergency in which he finds himself as to stupefy his thoughts and paralyze his actions. He drifts to disaster, grappling blindfolded with forces which are beyond his comprehension, failing without really fighting. And yet had the difficulties been of some different order, they might have been much greater than they were, and he would have surmounted them victoriously.’”
David Frum Dead Right
“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.