“What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 No. 2 (Oct.-Nov. 2000)
“Whosoever is out of patience is out of possession of his mind, body and soul.”
Sir Francis Bacon, quoted in the “Federalist Patriot” No. 04-34 25 August 2004 from federalist.com
“It is quite easy to give people a second nature, if you catch them early enough. There is no belief, however grotesque and even villainous, that cannot be made a part of human nature if it is inculcated in childhood and not contradicted in the child’s hearing.”
George Bernard Shaw Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism (he cites foot-binding, ritual suicide when the king dies and suttee).
In my latest National Post column I say don’t confuse malevolent stupidity with conspiracy.
“We try to make virtues out of the faults we have no wish to correct.”
Francois, duc de La Rouchefoucauld, quoted on https://www.hound-dog-media.com
“there is no real shame in retreating from an impossible situation or in fleeing from an enemy that seems too powerful to attack.”
Malcolm Cowley, Exile’s Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s.
"Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your fears."
Rudyard Kipling, quoted on www.hound-dog-media.com
“family: the thing on which all civilization is built; the idea that a man and a woman should live largely for the next generation and that they should, to some extent, defer their personal amusements, such as divorce and dissipation, for the benefit of the next generation.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 22, 1911, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 6 #5 (March 2003)