“when people work at jobs that require the inhibition of imagination and creativity, any activity that permits those qualities - no matter how difficult or demanding - is experienced as play, not work.”
Lillian Breslow Rubin Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class [re hobbies like tinkering with cars].
“Like most thinkers of his time, [Marcus] Aurelius conceived philosophy not as a speculative description of infinity, but as a school of virtue and a way of life. He hardly bothers to make up his mind about God; sometimes he talks like an agnostic, acknowledging that he does not know; but having made that admission, he accepts the traditional faith with a simple piety. ‘Of what worth is it to me,’ he asks, ‘to live in a universe without gods or Providence?’”
Will Durant Caesar and Christ
“People are shocked when they find out I’m not a good electrician”
Emailed by a friend without attribution
“Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
2 Timothy 3:7 [King James Version]
After noting that French Canadians put up passively with the Stamp Act “Carlton had to deal with the problem of the law: the French liked the swiftness and low cost of court access under the French system, but it was a different law, governed by French precedent, which was irritating in itself and practically incomprehensible to the administration in Quebec and difficult to obtain. The substitution of English criminal law had been popular with the public, as it instituted habeas corpus and put an end to the rack and interrogation under torture. London sent legal officers to go back to make a recommendation, and this issue dragged on for a few years, but Carlton became convinced that Quebec needed to devise its own Civil Code, to keep what was familiar, incite pride, and emancipate the province from recourse to French precedents.”
Conrad Black Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present
“In 1870, the Prussian army had captured the French emperor, Napoleon III, who followed Charles X, Metternich, and Louis-Philippe into exile in London.”
Conrad Black Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present [but he does not take what I consider to be the obvious point that all these continentals who sneer at the English-speaking world flee to it when in trouble, knowing it is the true and only home of liberty]
In my latest Epoch Times column I argue that you have to understand why Canada, the UK, Australia and France recognized a non-existent Palestinian state to grasp just what a disastrous decision it was.
“You must have taken great pains, sir; you could not naturally have been so very stupid.”
Samuel Johnson as “Quote” in Montreal Gazette July 22, 2004