Journalist W.R. “Titterton tells of an interview with the Aga Khan, in which His Highness said that if a wall fell and crushed his foot he would exclaim: ‘This is the best thing that could have happened to me.’ To which Chesterton responded, ‘Then I feel inclined to retort that the Persian language must be singularly deficient in expletives.’”
An author whose name I failed to record in Gilbert! Magazine Vol. 2 #6 Issue 15 (April-May, 1999)
“L’histoire, qui nous apprend ce qui arrive dans le monde, nous montre également les grands événements et les médiocres; cette confusion d’objets nous empêche souvent de discerner avec assez d’attention les choses extraordinaires qui sont renfermées dans le course de chaque siècle. Celui où nous vivons en a produit, à mon sense, de plus singuliers que les précédents.”
La Rochefoucauld Maximes (start of Réflexions Diverses XIX. Des événements de ce siècle)
“I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has ‘the freeborn mind’. But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology.”
C.S. Lewis God in the Dock quoted by Martin Capages Jr. on Substack [https://martincapagesjrphdpe.substack.com/p/c-s-lewis-on-climate-change-and-the]
“The only people who complain of being bored are people who are boring.”
Father Lawrence C. Smith in Gilbert! Magazine Vol. 6 #1 (September 2002)
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the proposal to exempt Quebec MNAs from an oath of allegiance to our actual Constitution in favour of some pompous make-believe is a dangerous relativist attack on the rule of law.
“We have, indeed, but to glance at the biographies of great men to find that the most distinguished inventors, artists, thinkers, and workers of all kinds, owe their success, in a great measure, to their indefatigable industry and application…. Hence it happens that the men who have most moved the world, have not been so much men of genius, strictly so called, as men of intense mediocre abilities, and untiring perseverance… ‘Alas!’ said a widow, speaking of her brilliant but careless son, ‘he has not the gift of continuance.’ Wanting in perseverance, such volatile natures are outstripped in the race of life by the diligent and even the dull. ‘Che va piano, va longano, e va lontano,’ says the Italian proverb: Who goes slowly, goes long, and goes far.”
Samuel Smiles Self-Help
“We cannot describe mind in terms of matter; if only for the reason that we cannot even perceive matter except by mind.”
G.K. Chesterton “The Route of Reason” in Where Are The Dead? quoted in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 # 4 (March-April 2022)
“More than 1,500 pieces of graffiti were preserved in Pompeii when that Roman city was buried in volcanic ash 1,922 years ago. They include: ‘Aufidius was here.’ ‘Marcus loves Spendusa.’ ‘I am amazed, O wall, that you have not collapsed and fallen, since you must bear the tedious stupidities of so many scrawlers.’ Source: The Washington Post.”
Globe & Mail July 12, 2001 p. A16