“The attribute view of personhood – the view that you don’t count as a person, with moral dignity and rights, unless you have such attributes as the ability to make plans and carry them out – is widely deployed in the debates over abortion. But it also carries over into everyday relationships. ‘You must have the attributes we value,’ whatever these may be, for example holding the same opinions, ‘or we treat you like dirt.’”

J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]

“And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination – you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.... Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency – the devotion to efficiency.”

Marlow, in Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness

“You play for the name on the front of the jersey, not the name on the back of the jersey.”

Boston Celtics hall-of-fame centre Robert Parish (quoted for instance on https://www.bostoncelticshistory.com/item/the-most-from-the-chief/).

“This is what ordered liberty gives us: a game with rules, making it understandable, playable, and enjoyable, but also infinitely complex, filled with endless variation and diversity. But without rules governing the play and interactions on or off the board, it would be meaningless. Likewise, when talking about freedom in a biblical sense, we are talking about the freedom to do as we are called to do. There are rules for our good, to give us the freedom to carry out our responsibilities, the duties of our offices and callings, willingly and faithfully. Lord Acton was correct: ‘Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do as we ought.’ And even more than that, freedom is living the way we were created to live, as image bearers of God.”

André Schutten and Michael Wagner, A Christian Citizenship Guide 2nd edition [following a surprisingly sensible chess analogy].

“If I kept my mouth shut, I wouldn’t be here.”

The caption beneath a stuffed speckled brown trout mounted on the wall in the office of Robert S. Bennett, a premier Washington lawyer and fixer, according to Bennett’s Washington Post obituary reprinted in the National Post September 18, 2023

“Our plans miscarry because we have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”

Seneca, quoted by a writer whose name I did not record in National Review July 11, 1994

“The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost.”

G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023) – the context was a long-ago crisis in the affairs of the famous jeweler Tiffany’s.

“The reason we have sexual harassment is that we do not believe in chastity. In the end, the only way to discourage unwanted advances is to condemn immoral ones. To discredit sexual harassment, one must discredit sexual sin.”

J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]