“Like most thinkers of his time, [Marcus] Aurelius conceived philosophy not as a speculative description of infinity, but as a school of virtue and a way of life. He hardly bothers to make up his mind about God; sometimes he talks like an agnostic, acknowledging that he does not know; but having made that admission, he accepts the traditional faith with a simple piety. ‘Of what worth is it to me,’ he asks, ‘to live in a universe without gods or Providence?’”
Will Durant Caesar and Christ
“Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
2 Timothy 3:7 [King James Version]
“You must have taken great pains, sir; you could not naturally have been so very stupid.”
Samuel Johnson as “Quote” in Montreal Gazette July 22, 2004
“Arnold Toynbee was right when he wrote that ‘the supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.’”
Paul Pearsall The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need
“the experience of hearing Judy Garland sing ‘Over the Rainbow.’ When the song and the credits end, I am left with the feeling that ought to be a paradise, and I am reminded of C.S. Lewis’s famous quote: ‘If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.’ We do not need to only participate in dark or troubling stories, but we do need to give priority to stories that haunt us, unsettle us, and expand us, whether through beauty and delight or tragedy. We also need to make time and space to interpret the stories through dialogue with others. Living in an atomistic culture, our default response to receiving a story is not to interpret it in community. We may have a personal opinion about it. We may tweet a 280 character review. We may debate parts of the story. But most of us are not inclined to take the time to slowly work through the meanings of the story and dialogue with one another. In other words, the prolonged, thoughtful, charitable dialogue about stories I’m recommending will not happen naturally. We need to intentionally pursue it.”
Alan Noble Disruptive Witness
“I had my patience tested. I’m negative.”
Emailed by a friend without attribution
“One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you’re right but not enough about the subject to know you’re wrong.”
Classic self-annihilating relativism from Neil deGrasse Tyson at the start of an ad for his masterclass that I’ve seen umpteen times on YouTube including specifically on January 24, 2025 on one of our own CDN videos.
In my latest Epoch Times column I suggest in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination that we all ask ourselves whether our own interventions in public debate are designed to lead people back to the light or drive them further into the darkness.