“To be in a romance is to be in uncongenial surroundings. To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance.”
“On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family,” in G.K. Chesterton Brave New Family
“I am unbelievably lucky: a. to be an American; b. To have my wife, the world’s finest human; c. To have never been severely or at least life-threateningly ill; d. To have never been in combat; e. To have had loving, caring, prosperous parents; f. To have an interesting, well-paid career; g. To have great friends, a great sister, nephew, niece, cousins, and, above all, son; h. Above all, to have learned to love and worship a God of love and understanding.”
“Benjamin J. Stein’s Diary” on his 60th birthday in The American Spectator February 2005
“There is bad religion, just as there is bad cooking, bad art or bad sex...”
Karen Armstrong in the Ottawa Citizen “Citizen’s Weekly” May 12, 2002.
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
“Says a passage in the Talmud” according to Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties
“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”
Thomas à Kempis, quoted as standalone “WORDS OF WISDOM” in Epoch Times email April 20, 2022.
“acedia – the terrifying condition of not much caring about anything”
A writer whose name I did not record in National Review February 1, 1993
“The believers in miracles accept them because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them because they have a doctrine against them.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 6 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2003)
“Knowing that a feeling exists is not the same as having the feeling.”
A friend paraphrasing John Stuart Mill (date not recorded).