“Help your pieces so they can help you.”
19th-century chess genius Paul Morphy, widely quoted online [for instance at https://quotefancy.com/quote/1661408/Paul-Morphy-Help-your-pieces-so-they-can-help-you]
“Everyone has a grievance. These days soliciters are offended if you merely politely decline to talk with them. Person at the door: Are you J. Budziszewski? Me: Who are you? Person: Are you J. Budziszewski? Me: Who are you? Person: Do you have such-and-such in your house? Me: Are you selling something? Person: Do you have such-and-such in your house? Me: Are you selling something? Person: [Long pause.] Not necessarily. Me: Thank you. I’m not interested. [I quietly close the door.] - I can understand why the soliciter was frustrated. It’s harder to make a sale when you are forced to begin by saying that you want to. What I don’t understand is why she was offended. This is my house.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]
“a social worker pointedly said: ‘Your problem is you want to play all of the strings of your violin at once.’ These words haunt me, and it took years to come to terms with the truth…”
Shelley Page in Ottawa Citizen Citizen’s Weekly March 16, 2003
“Never follow rabbit tracks when you are fighting elephants.”
Sen. Gerry St. Germain quoted in Globe & Mail March 22, 2004
“It was a wise instinct by which heaven was symbolized by wings that are free as the wind, and hell symbolized by chains.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News February 15, 1930, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022)
In my latest National Post column I argue that the same libertarian-libertine qualities that made social media appealing across normal partisan lines, and addictive, are now making them hugely and rightly unpopular and we must make the platforms legally “publishers” to put a stop to the raging indecency.
“The two great natural goods of marriage – the turning of the great wheel of the generations, and the union of a man and woman who cooperate in turning it – cannot be separated without damage to each of them. To suppress either one for the sake of happiness is to poison the very roots of joy.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]
“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 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]