“Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”
“Epicurus Greek philosopher (341-270 B.C.)” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail August 6, 2012.
“Man is governed not only by what he thinks but by what he chooses to think about.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News May 11, 1912, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008).
“How odd it is that the things we do spontaneously are usually bad for us. Doesn’t that suggest that something has gone wrong with our nature? I think so. Please notice that I am asking whether the condition of man’s nature has changed. I am not asking whether our nature itself has changed, for if that had happened, then either the being before the change wasn’t man – or it was, but we aren’t.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]
“H.G. Wells’ description of the town of Bromstead – ‘a dull, useless boiling up of human activities, an immense clustering of futilities.’”
William H. Whyte The Organization Man
“No one can invent new values or a new morality. What appear to be new ones are merely the results of cherry-picking elements of the ‘old’ morality, exaggerating them, and ignoring all of its other elements. This was [C.S.] Lewis’s great insight.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]
“I’ve written in this blog numerous times about the ‘revenge of conscience’. Conscience wreaks this revenge in a particularly spectacular way in the domain of sex. We aren’t really shameless; rather, because of our shame, we make excuses. People on the left make excuses for their shameful practices by saying that now all perversions are okay (in fact, they aren’t perversions). People on the right implausibly say ‘No, only my shameful practice is okay. Yours isn’t.’ Is it any wonder that the liberal dog is winning this fight?”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]
“The only shadow he cast was by artificial light, and he looked it.”
Mike Hammer’s internal monologue in Mickey Spillane My Gun is Quick [regarding the pimp Cobbie Bennett]
“There is a kind of work which any man can do, but from which many men shrink, generally because it is very hard work, sometimes because they fear it will lead them whither they do not wish to go. It is called thinking.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News July 10, 1915, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008)