“Though the phrase ‘easy-to-use’ on a home repair product is always a lie. No matter how easy it is to use, it will never be as easy as not using it.”
P.J. O’Rourke The Bachelor Home Companion
“It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.”
Dag Hammarskjold, quoted in Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
“It must be remembered that, though concord is in itself better than discord, discord may indicate a better state of things than is indicated by concord. Calamity and peril often force men to combine. Prosperity and security often encourage them to separate.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay The History of England
“The chief aim of order is to give room for good things to run wild.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted as header quotation by Fr. Robert Wild in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #5 (May/June 2022)
“The more intelligent one is, the more men of originality one finds. Ordinary people find no difference between men.”
Pascal Pensées
“This place is a hive of inactivity.”
Another of mine, from September 17, 2004, on being disappointed to see nothing happening on the roadwork outside our house… again.
“But even if ‘escape’ is the right word [for various rural wanderings], we will throw in our lot with Tolkien, who pointed out that escape of a certain type may not be such a bad thing: ‘Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it.’”
Mark Johnson in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #5 (May/June 2022)
“‘man will live forevermore because of Christmas day,’ as Harry Belafonte put it in those more confident times a mere 40 years ago…”
Mark Steyn in National Post December 24, 1999 [so 60 years ago now and the cultural and intellectual situation has not improved]