Man by nature asks questions he cannot possibly answer. If a man also rejects authority, the result is a detached nihilism or despair.
If a young man decides to scale to the top of a giant walnut tree by himself but simply cannot do it, he will need help. If he is too proud to accept [...]
“I suppose I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome, without regard to sex. Yes and there are the Medium Irksome and the Rare Irksome.” Flannery O’Connor.
Presenting a GKC quote is almost cheap. They’re so plentiful and many of them so well-known, it’s just too easy and commonplace. But once in awhile I see a new one and it’s too good to keep private.
Definition of secularism: “the idea that the religious sentiment, which stretched from one end of history to the [...]
The only way most people can be better off exchanging gifts than keeping the money and spending it on themselves is if their kith and kin know them so well, have cared enough to know them so well, as to give them things they wanted without realizing it. John Robson
When do we hit middle age? I think most people would place it at 35-40, but I see people who look middle aged at 33 and some who look youthful at 43. It’s probably not a matter of one’s chronological age, as much as it is the arrival of certain characteristics. Maybe when the body [...]
I earlier said The Great Society and its descendants today like college-aid programs for single mothers are manifestly unjust in their “actual workings on the individual level.” I qualified it because all such programs are couched in terms of “social justice.” Their proponents would argue that their programs correct prevous manifest injustice: the socio-economic conditions [...]
Chesterton “could, and would, write under the influence of alcohol, with no visible difficulties or impairments to his thought and clarity.” Michael Coren
I recently read a ratty old copy of George Gissing’s The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (c. 1903). One of the most pleasurable books I’ve read. A few excerpts:
For not, surely, by deliberate effort of thought does a man grow wise. The truths of life are not discovered by us. At moments unforeseen, some gracious [...]
It’s curious that pornography has increased in America at the same time that access to higher education has increased. At a time when we’re supposed to be getting smarter, we’re voluntarily plunging ourselves into the dream world of stupidity.
"The Daily Eudemon is the sort of thing that Chesterton or Mencken would be doing, if they were alive today. It's what, in saner times, was called journalism. In the writing and in the reading, it's exactly the sort of leisure we should want at the basis of culture."Mike Aquilina, Author of The Fathers of the Church and TV Talk Show Host.
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