“men who are called practical; and the much more practical pertinacity of the man who is called theoretical.”
G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas: “The Dumb Ox”
“In the heart of the remotest mountains rises the little Kirk…”
Thomas Carlyle The French Revolution
In my latest National Post column I say art galleries should not hide paintings after some Muslims call them blasphemous.
"If the only way around distress is to stop loving, well, then, let us be men about it and settle for distress.”
Robert Capon The Supper of the Lamb (the reference is not just or even primarily to romantic love but to fondness for all good things such as food, whiskey etc.)
“The river of human nonsense flows on forever.”
G.K. Chesterton, “A Sermon on Inns,” in The Flying Inn, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #1 (September 2003)
Regarding a Bible Ukrainian Christians had secretly copied by hand under Communism, “Would similar risks have been taken and similar loving care have been expended on copying out, say, Magna Carta if for some reason it had become unobtainable? Or the American Declaration of Independence? Or the Communist Manifesto? Or Lady Chatterley’s Lover? Or The Thoughts of Chairman Mao? Or, descending to what Dr Johnson called unresisting imbecility – the recently acclaimed Helsinki Declaration?”
Malcolm Muggeridge in a 1976 speech in Ian Hunter, ed., The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge
“Men go abroad to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.”
St. Augustine, quoted on title page of John Stewart Collis Living With A Stranger: A Discourse on the Human Body.