In my latest Epoch Times column, I say 2023 feels like one of those years where trouble was plainly a-brewin’ but the storm had not yet really broken.
“I pronounce it as certain that there was never yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.”
Benjamin Franklin quoted in The Patriot Post Founders’ Quote Daily September 25, 2006 from Federalist.com (and sourced to “Benjamin Franklin (The Busy-body, No. 3, 18 February 1728) Reference: The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Bigelow, ed., vol. 1 (350).”)
“Previous civilizations have degenerated. Previous ages have marched into the dark not knowing that they were marching into the dark. But in any previous time, were artists, scholars, and thinkers so eager to explain that degeneration was really progress?”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 4, 2023 (https://www.undergroundthomist.org/antipasto)
“In the name of commonsense let it be remembered that Shakespeare lived before the time when unsuccessful poets thought it poetical to be decadent and unsuccessful soldiers thought it military to be silent. Men like Sidney and Raleigh and Essex could have fought as well as Macbeth and could have ranted as well as Macbeth. Why should Shakespeare shrink from making a great general talk poetry when half the great generals of his time actually wrote great poetry?”
“The Macbeths,” in G.K. Chesterton Brave New Family
“I have very little doubt myself that, somehow or other, an inspiring and compelling creed will return to our country, because religion is really a need, like fires in winter: where there is no vision, the people perish, and perish of cold. The nation that has no gods at all not only dies, but what is more, is bored to death. But if ever a faith is firmly founded again, it will be at least interesting to notice those few things that have bridged the gulf, that stood firm when faith was lost, and were still standing when it was found again. Of these really interesting things one, in all probability, will be the English celebration of Christmas.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News, January 9, 1909, quoted in “GKC on Scripture – Conducted by Peter Floriani” “Proverbs Part 2” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the G.K. Chesterton Society Vol. 25 #3 (Jan.-Feb. 2022)
“The world owes God to the Jews”
G.K. Chesterton, cited as header quotation without further attribution in “An Orthodox Rabbi Looks at the ChesterBelloc” by Rabbi Mayer Schiller in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #6 (July/August 2022)
“If the judge himself had owned both the Brownlee farm and Hell, he would have rented out the Brownlee place and lived in Hell.”
“Fate’s Purse” in Russell Kirk Ancestral Shadows
In my latest Loonie Politics column I write to Saint Nick saying never mind peace on Earth or fancy toys, I just want a Canadian government that isn’t smugly incompetent on every file.