“Pessimism insists on the shortness of human life in order to show that life is valueless. Religion insists on the shortness of human life in order to show that life is frightfully valuable – is almost horribly valuable. Pessimism says that life is so short that it gives nobody a chance; religion says that life is so short that it gives everybody his final chance.”

G.K. Chesterton, “Nicholas Nickleby”, in Appreciations and Criticisms of Charles Dickens, quoted in “Chesterton’s Mail Bag” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2007)

“Odd comparison: ‘Believing in God is like believing in Zeus.’ They aren’t even ‘gods’ in the same sense of the term. Zeus was a contingent being which something else caused to exist. God is the necessary being who causes all else to exist.”

J. Budziszewski in "Underground Thomist" email Feb. 25, 2019

Here’s a video from the past. It’s a talk I gave at the Augustine College Summer Seminar in June 2019 so I’m tardy making it available. And it’s about the Middle Ages which were, far too many people think, necessarily awful because they were long ago and old is bad and new is good. In fact there are a great many modern horrors that would have appalled people in the Middle Ages and one of them is widespread ignorance about the period.

Sorry to take so long to get around to editing and posting it. Life got in the way.

“When the knight came upon the dragon, did he estimate whether the dragon could be overcome in his lifetime? No. He stood up and fought.”

J. Budziszewski in “Underground Thomist” email Feb. 25, 2019

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

Henry David Thoreau, quoted on www.hound-dog-media.com

“pessimist: a person who thinks everything is bad except himself.”

G.K. Chesterton in “The Flag of the World” in Orthodoxy, quoted in “Chesternitions” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 # 7 (June 2004)

“the present era, by and large since the end of the First World War, has returned to the practice and theory of radical hedonism.... We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent - people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.”

Erich Fromm To Have and To Be p. xxvii.

“That's what's important, to feel useful in this old world, to hit a lick against what's wrong, or to say a word for what's right even though you get walloped for saying that word. Now I may sound like a Bible beater yelling up a revival at a river crossing camp meeting, but that don't change the truth none. There's right and there's wrong. You got to do one or the other. You do the one and you're living. You do the other and you may be walking around, but you're dead as a beaver hat.”

Davy Crockett (John Wayne) in The Alamo (according to en.wikiquote.org)