“‘I’m not saying there is no God. I’m just not religious.’ How curious that the Lord of the Universe might exist, yet not be important enough to think about.”
J. Budziszewski “Underground Thomist” email “Reading an Empty Book” March 24, 2019
“But really, Marilla, one can’t stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?”
Anne in Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
“William James used to say that there was not much difference between one man and another but that the little difference there was was of great importance.”
Richard Hofstadter The American Political Tradition (author's 1967 Preface)
“happiness is an end and pleasure can only be a means.”
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News April 27, 1912 quoted in “Chesterton’s Mail Bag” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #8 (July-August 2005)
“Not then having learned the philosophy of yielding to disproportionate obstacles...”
Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail
“I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do.”
G.K. Chesterton in a letter to his fiancée, in which he confesses to being covered in ink after a day’s work, quoted by David W. Fagerberg in First Things March 2000
“‘It’s impossible to know anything about God.’ You would have to know a great deal about God in order to know that you couldn’t know anything about God (I mean anything else about Him). At the least you would have to know either that He doesn’t exist, that even if He exists He doesn’t care whether you know about Him, or that even if He cares He is incompetent to tell us anything about Himself.”
J. Budziszewski "Underground Thomist" email “Reading an Empty Book” March 24, 2019
“I do so love fireworks. They are so unnecessary.”
John Gielgud, quoted by Richard John Neuhaus in First Things #153 (May 2005)