In my latest Epoch Times column I take aim at the government’s self-deceiving reliance on “continue” to describe things they are not even trying to do and would not know how to start trying.
“The most essential educational product is Imagination…. The child who can see the pictures in the fire will need less to see the pictures on the film…. So long as the minds of the poor were perpetually stirred and enlivened by ghost-stories, fairy-stories and legends of wild and wonderful things, they remained comparatively contented; possibly too contented, but still contented. The moment modern science and instruction stopped all these things, we had a Labour Question and the huge discontent of today… dull people always want excitement.”
“The True Victorian Hypocrisy,” in G.K. Chesterton Brave New Family
“Those fortunate enough to possess controlled neurosis – which is the manifestation of ‘total focus,’ which is the secret to thinking big – are ‘obsessive, they’re driven, they’re singleminded and sometimes they’re almost maniacal.... Where other people are paralyzed by neurosis, [successful entrepreneurs] are actually helped by it.’”
Donald Trump in The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump and Tony Schwartz, cited in Chronicles magazine June 1988 [and how true it proved, and how unselfaware]
“We meet here [the grave of her brother, who died of croup at two and a half, two years before she was born]. It is a place where there is but a thin veil between the past, the present, and the future. It is a thin place, a sacred space for the two of us. The phrase ‘thin places’ comes to us from legends of pre-Christian Ireland…. Heaven and Earth, the Celtic saying goes, are only three feet apart; but in a thin place that distance is even shorter. It’s a place where we can sense the Divine more readily. Or perhaps it refers to a place where one can travel back and forth between two worlds: this one and the eternal world. Stonehenge comes to mind. As does Mount Sinai… We encounter God in the thin places, which become sacred spaces when we sanctify the ephemeral with monuments and alters…. There are man-made thin spaces. Cathedrals that soar… Or the small house of worship that cried out to Saint Francis of Assisi to be repaired. There is music that breaks the barrier… We have all had those moments when we felt touched… [her elision] by something.”
Diane Weber Bederman in Convivium 10-11/13
“‘Are you going to go back to farming after the war, captain?’ ‘I can think of better ways to make a living than looking up a mule’s arse.’”
Harry S Truman in the movie Truman (from his time in World War I), slightly Bowdlerized.
In my latest Epoch Times column I challenge Canadians, especially those in positions of authority, to stop embracing and even enforcing mediocrity… starting by admitting they have a problem.
“‘Because you don’t love mankind, that’s why!’ ‘I love mankind… it’s people I can’t stand!!’”
Lucy and Linus at the end of a Peanuts strip (of which only these two panels appear as the illustration on story in Maclean’s May 15, 2006).
Robson’s Rules of History: Anything with “People’s” in the name is a bad thing.
One of mine, obviously, from October 29, 1997 (I did not record what specific entity or incident prompted the thought)