“this life of dust and broken bottles”.
Mark Studdock realizing with horror that he’d spent his whole life doing things he didn’t enjoy to impress people he didn’t like, in C.S. Lewis That Hideous Strength
“‘All ‘progressive’ thought has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain…. Hitler, because in his joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades.’”
Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The Atlantic Monthly February 2002
“We deliberate not about ends but about means.”
Aristotle Ethics
“the road to hell may just as well be paved with no intentions as with the proverbial good ones.”
“Preface to Part Two: Imperialism” in Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism (specifically regarding the claim that the British Empire was acquired absent-mindedly).
“If chemicals had power of choice, it would be impossible to be certain that a chemical experiment would come off. If an acid ever prayed not to be led into temptation, chemistry would not be an exact science.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 19, 1913 quoted in Gilbert Magazine 9-10/08
“One of the most enduring truths is that man is a verb; but what human beings can do remains astonishing and frightening.”
Michael Young in National Review Dec. 5, 1994
In my latest Epoch Times column I denounce the Canadian Forces’ proposed plan for military chaplains as an Orwellian project in which uniformity is diversity, exclusion is inclusion and freedom is slavery.
“Christmas can be commercial and tacky – after all, graduations, weddings and funerals are often commercial and tacky – but it should never be sentimental. Sentimentality is love without sacrifice. The sentimental man sends his wife flowers but never helps with the dishes.”
Fr. Raymond J. DeSouza in National Post Dec. 24, 2002