“But when it comes to a fight for private property – you can’t keep women out of that. You can’t have the family farm without the family. You must have Christian marriage again: you can’t have solid small property with all this vagabond polygamy.”
G.K. Chesterton in Tales of the Long Bow, as header quotation on David Beresford in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #5 (May/June 2024)
“I’m constantly amazed that anybody cares what I do.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill as “Quote of the Day” in New York Times July 21, 2002
“In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies – e.g., Hammurabi, David, Socrates – would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed – the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus’ arrest, Peter’s denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man.”
Will Durant Caesar and Christ
“There’s an old saying, ‘Choose your enemies wisely; you become like them.’”
Randall Smith in The Catholic Thing April 1, 2025
“What is the matter with internationalism is that it is imperialism. It is the imposition of one ideal of one sect on the vital varieties of men. But it is worse than the imposition of ideals. It is actually the imposition of indifference.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News June 17, 1922, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #5 (May/June 2024)
“the time-honored axiom that if something is not worth doing, it is not worth doing right.”
Dave Barry Dave Barry’s Bad Habits
“Blessed is he who has found his work. Let him ask no other blessedness.”
Thomas Carlyle, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience [and doubtless many others; those are just the two in my files].
“A million kids want to clean up the earth. A million parents want them to start with their rooms.”
Emailed by a friend without attribution