Question from a student: “I’m scared of metaphysics. A friend of mine wrote an essay for another course, in which he denied the persistence of personal identity. According to my friend, since some things about me have changed during the last two years, the me of today isn’t the same as the me of two years ago. We are literally different persons. This is deeply disturbing."
Reply: "... if my personal identity has no persistence, then how could ‘I’ find it disturbing? The problem with your friend’s argument isn’t metaphysical reasoning, but flawed metaphysical reasoning... there must be a real you that persists through the changes. If that weren’t true, then it wouldn’t even make sense for you to say “I have changed” -- because at the moment of the change, “I” would have ceased to exist.... Metaphysics is just thinking carefully about what the real world is like.... Trust me. You exist.”

J. Budziszewski "Underground Thomist" July 22, 2019

“The things I like arguing about are absolute things; whether a proof is logical or whether a practice is just.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Dec. 17, 1927, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008)

"Extreme pessimism is a luxury that only the very young can afford. As you become older, pessimism becomes much more spiritually expensive, and you don’t indulge in it unless you are really convinced of what you’re saying. When you’re a 25-year-old, it looks good to say that life is just a can of worms. When you’re 55, it’s not as funny. You’ve seen a few worms by that time."

Robertson Davies, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail Oct. 12, 2005

“The fact that… we still live well cannot ease the pain of feeling that we no longer live nobly.”

John Updike, quoted by ordained minister Kevin Little in an Op Ed in the Ottawa Citizen June 13, 2002

“one of the most remarkable things about the great philosophical books is that they ask the same sort of profound questions that children ask. The ability to retain the child’s view of the world, with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare – and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking. We are not required to think as children in order to understand existence. Children certainly do not, and cannot, understand it – if, indeed, anyone can. But we must be able to see as children see, to wonder as they wonder, to ask as they ask.”

Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren How to Read a Book

“Nothing can be clearer than that we require a story to explain to ourselves why we are here and what our future is to be, and many other things, including where authority resides.”

Neil Postman Building a Bridge to the 18th Century

“I refer to those who have fallen under the devilish spell of what is vaguely called ‘postmodernism,’ and in particular a subdivision of it sometimes called ‘deconstructionism.’… in this way of understanding things, language is under deep suspicion and is even thought to be delusional. Jean Baudrillard, a Frenchman, of all things, tells us that not only does language falsely represent reality, but there is no reality to represent. (Perhaps this explains, at long last, the indifferent French resistance to the German invasion of their country in World War II: They didn’t believe it was real.) In an earlier time, the idea that language is incapable of mapping reality would have been considered nonsense, if not a form of mental illness. In fact, it is a form of mental illness. Nonetheless, in our own time the ideas has become an organizing principle of prestigious academic departments. You can get a Ph.D. in this sort of thing.”

Neil Postman Building a Bridge to the 18th Century

“Pessimism insists on the shortness of human life in order to show that life is valueless. Religion insists on the shortness of human life in order to show that life is frightfully valuable – is almost horribly valuable. Pessimism says that life is so short that it gives nobody a chance; religion says that life is so short that it gives everybody his final chance.”

G.K. Chesterton, “Nicholas Nickleby”, in Appreciations and Criticisms of Charles Dickens, quoted in “Chesterton’s Mail Bag” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2007)