“The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”
William Morris, quoted as standalone “WORDS OF WISDOM” in Epoch Times email teaser August 20, 2022
“At age seven, the much-tutored [future Queen] Victoria was reading British classics, perfecting her German and learning French. However, her frustrated piano master one day noted, ‘There is no royal road to music, Princess. You must practise like everybody else.’ Victoria slammed the piano shut. ‘There! You see there is no must about it!’”
Donna Jacobs “Monday Morning” in Ottawa Citizen May 21, 2007
“Science in the modern sense consists not in a man trying to know what he does not know, but in his pretending not to know what he does know.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News February 27, 1926, quoted in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 # 4 March-April 2022
“The final outcome of critical consciousness, however, need not be that we are sure of nothing. It can lead to our being graced with a ‘second naïveté.’ We are indebted to philosopher Paul Ricouer for that happy phrase….. Having come to recognize that things could theoretically be other than they are, we are brought to the perception that they are as we thought them to be; but on the far side of all our questioning, we know that in a way we did not know it before.”
Richard John Neuhaus Death on a Friday Afternoon [I believe it’s from that book though my notes were slightly cryptic and in any case it’s definitely Neuhaus]
“Evil ideas are at the root of all this enormous evil which plagues the world at present.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News June 2, 1917, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #6 (July/August 2022)
“It’s not whether you win or lose; it’s how you place the blame.”
Oscar Wilde [widely quoted online but I do not have a more precise attribution].
In my latest Mercatornet article I say that what matters in the upcoming U.S. election is not what the people involved would have you focus on.
“Carissimi, when praised for the ease and grace of his melodies, exclaimed, ‘Ah! you little know with what difficulty this ease has been acquired.’ Sir Joshua Reynolds, when once asked how long it had taken him to paint a certain picture, replied, ‘All my life.’”
Samuel Smiles Self-Help