"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know." St. Augustine, quoted in Jon Winokur, Zen To Go

"Wish not so much to live long as to live well." Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack

"And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger." Luke 2:16

"anyone who, walking through the streets at night, hears the bells begin suddenly to laugh and thunder upon Christmas Eve will find it difficult to persuade himself that something of thrilling import to humanity has not at that moment occurred." G.K. Chesterton, "Christmas Day," reprinted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 6 #3 (December 2002)

"It is true that I do believe in fairy tales; in the sense that I marvel so much at what does exist that I am readier to admit what might." G.K. Chesterton in New Witness quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #4 (January-February 2006)

"The mark of civilization, says [Yale professor David] Gelernter, is the shortening of the list of reasons that justify taking human life. But now footnotes are being added to the list." Richard John Neuhaus in First Things January 2004

In a Christmastime piece for Convivium (a Cardus publication) today I explain how my lack of musical talent has lately come to seem a valuable, if peculiar, gift.

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." Voltaire