“Nature is never novel; the spire of Salisbury Cathedral only has to be seen to remind one that one always knew it was there.”
Malcolm Muggeridge About Kingsmill (1951) in Ian Hunter, ed., The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge
“How many men have sold their souls to be admired by fools?”
G. K. Chesterton in “Ring of Lovers” in The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond quoted in “Chesterton For Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #2 (Nov.-Dec. 2021)
“When men claimed scientific authority for their ignorance, and police support for their aggressive presumption, it is time for Mr Chesterton and all other men of sense to withstand them sturdily.”
George Bernard Shaw reviewing G.K. Chesterton’s 1922 Eugenics and Other Evils in The Nation. Shaw called it “a graver, harder book” than GKC’s other books, in a good way, and praised his “sledge-hammer directness” and taking a stand, according to Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #3 Jan.-Feb. 2022)
“Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the Unknowable. But there it sits, nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.”
H.L. Mencken, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail April 6, 2009
“As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence.”
James Madison, quoted by Christopher Buckley in National Review November 22, 1999
“Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.”
Pascal Pensées
“She [Iris Murdoch] cannot believe in a personal God, she says, because God cannot be ‘a thing among other things.’ That is disappointing. One learns in Christian Theology 101 that God is not a thing among things, an existent among existents, but the Absolute Being of all that is, was, or ever can be. But apparently Iris Murdoch did not learn that in her Anglo-Irish Protestant childhood. It is truly disconcerting how often this happens. One encounters people who say they do not believe in God only to discover, upon examination, that the God they do not believe in I do not believe in either. But it is especially disconcerting in someone of the intellectual stature of Iris Murdoch.”
Richard John Neuhaus in First Things December 2003
In my latest Epoch Times column I explain why we talk a lot less about free speech than we used to, and a lot less convincingly.