“It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog.”
Joseph Conrad, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail Oct. 19, 1999
“If the policeman regulates drinking, why should he not regulate smoking, and then sleeping, and then speaking, and then breathing?”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News June 5, 1920, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)
“For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.”
“Larry Eisenberg (1919-), U.S. science-fiction writer” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail March 16, 2011
“Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan.”
Larry Winget, quoted by Jeff Hayden on Inc. online (www.inc.com/jeff-haden/top-350-inspiring-motivational-quotes-to-tweet-and-share.html)
“Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe it’s just a cosmic coincidence. For many TikTok users, the moon phase trend affirms that they did find their soulmates. TikTok users are comparing the moon phases of the days they were born to those of their significant others — if the phases fit together to make a perfect full moon, according to the trend, they’re soulmates. If there are gaps between the overlapped moons, the relationship is supposedly doomed to fail.”
NBC March 6, 2023 [and filed in my notes under “How we laugh at the superstitious past”]
“it was Fran Lebowitz, I think, who said that God created Los Angeles so insomniacs in New York would have a place to call in the middle of the night.”
A writer whose name I did not record in The New Republic Oct. 7, 1991
“There are a great many truths that we can’t help knowing at some level. Even so, we may not be aware of knowing them, we can deny knowing them, and we can pretend to ourselves that we don’t know them.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]
“Commentators on the political scene tend in retrospect to regard the figures who emerge into prominence as totally derisory. Understandably so. It is extremely difficult, as I know from personal experience, to spend time with one or other of them without reaching the conclusion that some accomplished clown like Peter Sellers has substituted for him.”
Malcolm Muggeridge in 1972 in Chronicles of Wasted Time, in Ian Hunter, ed., The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge