Posts in Life
Words Worth Noting - August 8, 2025

“Of his eighteen years as emperor Septimius gave twelve to war. He destroyed his rivals in a swift and savage campaigns; he razed Byzantium after four years’ siege, thereby lowering the barrier to the spreading Goths; he invaded Parthia, took Ctesiphon, annexed Mesopotamia, and hastened the fall of the Arsacid kings. In his old age, suffering from gout but fretful lest his army deteriorate through five years of peace, he led an expedition into Caledonia. After expensive victories against the Scots he withdrew into Britain, and retired to York to die (211). ‘I have been everything,’ he said, ‘and it is worth nothing.’”

Will Durant Caesar and Christ

Words Worth Noting - August 1, 2025

“GAUGUIN AND OTHER EXPERIMENTAL ARTISTS have devoted themselves not merely to the study of savage subjects, but to some extent to the imitation of savage art. Some of them, or some of their imitators, have deliberately set out not merely to paint Hottentots, but to paint as badly as Hottentots would paint. Some of them look as if they had succeeded. I suppose Gauguin would not approve of his own imitators, for he said, ‘In art one is a revolutionary or a plagiarist.’ Remembering the old schools and traditions, we might answer that the great artists have been the plagiarists.”

G.K. Chesterton “Gauguin and the Art of the Savage” reprinted in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #6 (July-August 2024) [and if Gaugin’s dictum were true it would leave very little room for anyone actually to do art]