“It is easy to maintain a situation while it is still secure;/ It is easy to deal with a situation before symptoms develop;/ It is easy to break a thing when it is yet brittle;/ It is easy to dissolve a thing when it is yet minute.”
Lao Tzu II.LXIV.152
“Vanitas vanitatum, which of us has his wish in this world, or, having it, is satisfied?”
G.K. Chesterton “Introduction to Thackeray”, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023)
“For better than three decades, [Fr. Marvin] O’Connell was, by all accounts, an imposing presence in the classroom and a highly productive scholar. However, he was not so imposing that an occasional student couldn’t resist taking what might be termed a blue book liberty. In response to an essay question on the theology of Martin Luther an unnamed student came up with a ten-word ‘essay’ that, in his teacher’s estimate, captured the ‘contradiction that lies at the heart of Lutheran salvation theology.’ And here it is: ‘I’m not OK. And you’re not OK. But that’s OK.’”
Chuck Chalberg reviewing Telling Stories That Matter: Memoirs and Essays of Father Marvin O’Connell in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023)
In my latest Loonie Politics column I analyze how Claudine Gay and Harvard put on a master class in “How Not To Manage A Scandal” by avoiding the crucial initial step of stopping to think whether they were in some way in the wrong before lashing out, whining, faking contrition and otherwise digging themselves into a deep deep hole.
In my latest Epoch Times column, I take up my own challenge from my 2023 year-ender and suggest five fundamental improvements we need in public policy in 2024.
“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)