“Thanatos can assume any form it wishes; it can kill eros, the life drive, and then simulate it. Once thanatos does this to you, you are in big trouble; you suppose you are driven by eros but it is thanatos wearing a mask.”

Philip K. Dick VALIS

“If there are ghastly things to be faced the only thing we can do is make it glorious to face them.”

GKC in New Witness May 17, 1918 quoted in Gilbert magazine Vol. 9 #2 (Oct.-Dec. 2005)

“We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Oct. 21, 1905, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #2 (Nov.-Dec. 2021)

“On social upheaval — say transgenderism and the invasion of women’s privacy and basic dignity (here I think of Macbeth’s quizzical outburst before the witches: ‘you should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so’)…”

Rex Murphy in National Post April 22, 2023

“On TikTok, one of the latest music trends is speeding up popular songs. And now, fans are demanding that artists comply with their expectations for speedy sounds.... Artists and labels are now leaning into the trend by releasing their own sped-up remixes of songs. The remixes will oftentimes see even more engagement than the original, according to the TikTok spokesperson.”

NBC November 22, 2023 [and filed in my notes under the heading “Patience? How long’s that gonna take?”

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)