“When a soldier complains of his hard life (or a laborer, etc.) try giving him nothing to do.”
Pascal Pensées
“Any man with a large mind ought to be able to write about anything.”
G.K. Chesterton in “What Is Right With The World” quoted in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 # 4 March-April 2022
“Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”
“Orthodoxy, by Gilbert K. Chesterton; The Maniac Page 1” according to https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/81231/what-was-g-k-chestertons-proof-of-original-sin-and-what-is-so-unique-about-it
“The best way to teach people critical thinking is to teach them to write. Because there’s no difference between that and thinking. One of the things that blows me away about universities is that no one ever tells students why they should write something. ‘Well, why are you writing?’ ‘Well, you need the grade.’ It’s like, no! You need to learn to think because thinking makes you act effectively in the world. Thinking makes you win the battles you undertake – and those could be battles for good things. If you can think, speak, and write, you are absolutely deadly. Nothing can get in your way. So that’s why you learn to write. And if you can formulate your arguments coherently, and make a presentation, if you can speak to people, if you can lay out a proposal. People give you money; they give you opportunities; you have influence. That’s what you’re at university for. Be articulate. Because that’s the most dangerous thing, you can possibly be.”
Jordan Peterson “Mondays of Meaning” email December 6, 2021
“I believe that people are stronger than their misfortunes.”
Jordan Peterson, quoting himself on Instagram 17/5/22 [https://www.instagram.com/p/CdqTBOxMOFq/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=]
“‘Shucks,’ he [Thomas Edison] told a discouraged co-worker during one trying series of experiments, ‘we haven’t failed. We now know a thousand things that won’t work, so we’re that much closer to finding what will.’”
Edison’s son Charles, quoted in William Bennett The Book of Virtues [BTW a friend once emailed me this version: “I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” They attributed it to Benjamin Franklin which appears to be spurious, but it is also widely available on line as being from Edison and I suspect it is an erroneous version of the above.]
“fairy land arouses [in the child] a longing for he knows not what.”
C.S. Lewis quoted by David W. Fagerberg in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 17 #1 (9-10/13)
“If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.”
La Rochefoucauld, quoted in Globe & Mail October 18, 1999