“Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose.”
C.S. Lewis, quoted as standalone “WORDS OF WISDOM” in Epoch Times email teaser on April 9, 2023 [Easter Sunday, appropriately].
“Freddy’s eyebrows rose. ‘How did you know we’re not from New York?’ ‘I’m awake at the moment. What’ll it be?’”
The reply is from the old bartender, in Spider Robinson Time Travellers Strictly Cash
“Distrust every poet who says to you, ‘I do not know where this came from.’ The proper answer is, ‘We none of us know where it comes from, but you have got to know where it is going to.’ You have got to have an image to be evoked before the end; and to work up to that from the beginning. In that sense, all good poetry is written backwards. That is exactly the difference between the inspired poet and the inspiring poet. The bad, or inspired, poet, lets the first lines dictate the last lines. The good, or inspiring, poet, lets the last lines dictate the first.”
G.K. Chesterton in New York American November 19, 1932, quoted in “Chesterton’s Mail Bag” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #6 (July/August 2022)
“‘Read biography,’ said Disraeli, ‘for that is life without theory.’”
John O’Sullivan in National Review December 8, 1997
“When the Puritans say they are democrats, they mean that they really have a universal desire to prevent ordinary people from doing ordinary things.”
G.K. Chesterton in English Life March 1924, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #3 (1/2/2022)
In my latest Epoch Times column I warn aspiring politicians, and voters, that the biggest problem with government is that the people who undertake it make no effort to learn how it works until it’s far too late.
“hate is always the result of a feeling of impotence.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn in National Review January 22, 1990
“The world is run by those who show up.”
Bruce Vincent (a friend of his) quoted by William Perry Pendley, President and CEO of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, in a speech January 21, 1993 in Vancouver