“‘Of course there might be a God. I just don’t know.’ You are either living as though He did, or living as though He didn’t. If you don’t know anything at all, then how did you choose?/ The psalmist famously wrote, ‘The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’’ Did he call the man a fool for not knowing God is real? Or for knowing God is real, but pretending to himself that he didn’t?/ Few people lose belief in God, and then do wrong. The more often traveled path is to do wrong, excuse it, then look for reasons to disbelieve in God.”

J. Budziszewski "Underground Thomist" email “Reading an Empty Book” March 24, 2019.

“Concerning aesthetic values, I always felt the world cannot fall apart as long as free men see the rainbow, feel the rain, and hear the laugh of a child.”

Frank Capra The Name Above the Title

Robson on National Post Radio with Anthony Furey on how long the quarantine can last - April 8, 2020

John Robson

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“Misfortune is a point of view. Your headache may feel good to an aspirin salesman.”

Tony Robbins Unlimited Power

“‘I’m not saying there is no God. I’m just not religious.’ How curious that the Lord of the Universe might exist, yet not be important enough to think about.”

J. Budziszewski “Underground Thomist” email “Reading an Empty Book” March 24, 2019

“But really, Marilla, one can’t stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?”

Anne in Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Of the things that frighten us, the fear of being left out of the flow of human interaction is certainly one of the worst… In many preliterate cultures solitude is thought to be so intolerable that a person makes a great effort never to be alone; only witches and shamans feel comfortable spending time by themselves…. The Latin locution for ‘being alive’ was inter hominem esse, which literally meant ‘to be among men’; whereas ‘to be dead’ was inter hominem esse desinere, or ‘to cease to be among men.’”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Vilfredo Pareto… developed a logarithmic pattern that demonstrated that, typically, only 20 per cent of people controlled 80 per cent of a country’s wealth. Later, American economist Max Lorenz observed that Pareto’s principle, often called the 80/20 rule, could be applied broadly to other areas, such as productivity (20 per cent of employees do 80 per cent of the work) and machinery management (20 per cent of machines are responsible for 80 per cent of breakdowns).”

Marnie Ko in Western Standard September 27, 2004