“Nothing can be clearer than that we require a story to explain to ourselves why we are here and what our future is to be, and many other things, including where authority resides.”
Neil Postman Building a Bridge to the 18th Century
“Anyone can learn from a good teacher. The real test is being able to learn from a bad one.”
J. Budziszewski “Underground Thomist” Feb. 25, 2019
“Pessimism insists on the shortness of human life in order to show that life is valueless. Religion insists on the shortness of human life in order to show that life is frightfully valuable – is almost horribly valuable. Pessimism says that life is so short that it gives nobody a chance; religion says that life is so short that it gives everybody his final chance.”
G.K. Chesterton, “Nicholas Nickleby”, in Appreciations and Criticisms of Charles Dickens, quoted in “Chesterton’s Mail Bag” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2007)
“When the knight came upon the dragon, did he estimate whether the dragon could be overcome in his lifetime? No. He stood up and fought.”
J. Budziszewski in “Underground Thomist” email Feb. 25, 2019
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
Henry David Thoreau, quoted on www.hound-dog-media.com
"We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves that we have no great ones."
François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, quoted on www.hound-dog-media.com
“pessimist: a person who thinks everything is bad except himself.”
G.K. Chesterton in “The Flag of the World” in Orthodoxy, quoted in “Chesternitions” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 # 7 (June 2004)
“the present era, by and large since the end of the First World War, has returned to the practice and theory of radical hedonism.... We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent - people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.”
Erich Fromm To Have and To Be p. xxvii.