“‘His imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times: his virtues were his own.’“
Edward Gibbon on Belisarius, cited in George F. Kennan American Diplomacy 1900-1950
“it will be well to remember that when a rigid officialism breaks in upon the voluntary compromises of the home, that officialism itself will be only rigid in its action and will be exceedingly limp in its thought.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted without further source in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #2 (Nov.-Dec. 2021)
In my latest Epoch Times column I heckle an entire Parliament full of people who didn’t know who fought who in World War II, that guests for a high-security speaker should be vetted or just about anything else.
“But I remained incommunicado, if you please, in a hole of my own making. And what fun is there in hiding when no one’s looking for you?”
Frank Capra The Name Above the Title [about having withdrawn from the world of film, having lost his nerve].
“Industry makes work go well, but a man who puts off work is always at hand-grips with ruin.”
Hesiod, quoted in Maclean’s July 28, 2003
“The Church is the only institution that ever attempted to create a machinery of pardon. The Church is the only thing that ever attempted by system to pursue and discover crimes, not in order to avenge, but in order to forgive them. The stake and rack were merely the weaknesses of the religion; its snobberies, its surrenders to the world. Its specialty – or, if you like, its oddity – was this merciless mercy; the unrelenting sleuthhound who seeks to save and not slay.”
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News February 20, 1909, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2022)
“Hindsight can be painful... for instance when you look back and see a really big hind end.”
Mine, from experience, November 2, 2008
“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.”
“Thomas Jefferson (Summary View of the Rights of British America, August 1774)” quoted as The Federalist Patriot “Founder’s Quote Daily” for July 8, 2005 from Federalist.com