“‘Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,/ Wearing out life’s evening grey:/ Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell,/ What is bliss? and which the way?/ Thus I spoke; and speaking sigh’d;/ – scarce repressed the starting tear; – When the smiling sage reply’d – Come, my lad, and drink some beer.’”

Samuel Johnson, cited in D.J. Enright’s introduction to Johnson The History of Rasselas

“I say you cannot really understand any myths till you have found that one of them is not a myth. Turnip ghosts mean nothing if there are not real ghosts. Forged bank-notes mean nothing if there are no real bank-notes. Heathen gods mean nothing, and must always mean nothing, to those of us that deny the Christian God.”

GKC, “The Priest of Spring,” in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton

In my latest National Post column I say the best way to get universities to stop promoting malevolent radicalism and start teaching again, and to promote actual social justice as well, is to privatize them and see what kind of education the young adults who will supposedly benefit from it are actually willing to pay full price for.

In 1922 Chesterton in London “gave another talk on Socialism where he said his primary objection to socialism was that ‘it would be a dictatorship, with a tyranny of officials in every department of life.’”

“100 Years Ago” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #2 (Nov.-Dec. 2021) [and if Chesterton, a Christian apologist and fiction writer, could see it so clearly, why couldn’t politicians, pundits and professors?]

His list of the people we get angry with includes“those who speak ill of us, and show contempt for us, in connexion with the things we ourselves most care about.... We feel particularly angry on this account if we suspect that we are in fact, or that people think we are, lacking completely or to an effective extent in the qualities in question.”

Aristotle Rhetoric Book II

“‘It is wrong to proselytize among people who have a religious faith,’ says [UofT professor emeritus of comparative religion, William] Oxtoby. ‘No one has the moral right to tell someone they can’t find salvation without Christianity.’”

Maclean’s January 20, 2003 [And approvingly, of course, about an upsurge in violence against Christian missionaries, proving once again Ronald Knox’s jibe that studying comparative religion is the best way to become comparatively religious]

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say much of the left was caught offside on Hamas because ideas have consequences and they have embraced ones that lead to terrible places.

“‘Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.’ Nathaniel Hawthorne American writer (1804-64)”

“Nathaniel Hawthorne American writer (1804-64)” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail February 6, 2013