“Literature is only the contrast between the weird curves of Nature and the straightness of the soul.”
G.K. Chesterton, in header quotation without further attribution in “Giving Cheese Its Due” by Jason West in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #6 (July/August 2022)
“Nothing in politics, the famous British historian F.S. Oliver remarked, is sadder than the ‘man of sterling character whose genius is so antipathetic to the particular emergency in which he finds himself as to stupefy his thoughts and paralyze his actions. He drifts to disaster, grappling blindfolded with forces which are beyond his comprehension, failing without really fighting. And yet had the difficulties been of some different order, they might have been much greater than they were, and he would have surmounted them victoriously.’”
David Frum Dead Right
“If my circumstances have made me wholly stupid, how can I be certain even that I am right in altering those circumstances?”
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News December 1, 1906, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)
“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?”