"The main impulse of a true genius is not to look into himself, with endless digging into his conscience and subconscious - as Pasternak said, ‘conscience is like the headlights of a car; their light directed outward illuminates the way, directed inward leads to catastrophe’ - but to look out of himself. And to give. And if the main impulse of your existence is the desire to give, you cannot really be a nasty character. That’s what, probably, Pushkin had in mind when he exclaimed in his Mozart and Salieri: 'Genius and villainy are incompatible.'"
Chronicles magazine 1/88 [again I had regrettably not yet in 1988 acquired the habit of recording the author as well as publication when I recorded points I considered noteworthy]
“I find it enormously interesting that this approach [that the law is what the sovereign commands] to finding a replacement for a transcendental source of values involves, in effect, a redirection of metaphorical energy: to find a human equivalent for God, there is a focus not on God’s goodness, but on his Power. It makes sense.”
Arthur Allen Leff, “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law,” Duke Law Journal Vol. 1979 #6
In my latest National Post column I say the Prime Minister isn't being inconsistent or confused about allegedly groping a reporter 18 years ago; he's consistently denying the existence of truth.
“The motto ‘Do the right thing and let God take care of the consequences’ makes sense only on the assurance that he will take care of the consequences. Without that assurance, doing the right thing means taking care of the consequences – or trying to.”
J. Budziszewski in First Things June-July 2002
"The questions are not how or when we die. It is how and why we live."
Ron McCloskey in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 5 #5 (March 2002)
"There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man."
G.K. Chesterton quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 # 7 (June 2004)