“for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in William Shakespeare Hamlet
“In general terms I think that morality depends upon religion…”
James Fitzjames Stephen in Liberty Equality Fraternity
“The whole universe is change, and life itself is but what you deem it.”
Marcus Aurelius
Re the title character, a dog, doing things like hunting, fighting, being full, lying in the sun etc. “They were expressions of life, and life is always happy when it is expressing itself.”
Jack London White Fang
“Her choice [that of the mother/title character in the novel Sophie's Choice] is plainly evil; for the sake of a better result, she has united herself with the sin of the murderer. And in the end the other child dies too. But how could she choose otherwise, if she had no faith in God?”
J. Budziszewski What We Can’t Not Know
“Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.”
Max Beerbohm quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #5 (March 2006)
In a speech to the Augustine College Summer Seminar in June (sorry, I’m a bit behind in my video editing) I argue that the calamities of the 20th century derived, fundamentally, from a rejection of the notion of truth.
In my latest Mercatornet piece I argue that Stephen Hawking’s arguments in his last book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, are as unconvincing as they are dreary.