Category: Commonplace_1
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Alexis de Tocqueville: “…bribe the public with the public’s money…”
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money. Alexis de Tocqueville
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Thomas Merton: “The Trappist Abbey: Matins”
When the full fields begin to smell of sunrise And the valleys sing in their sleep, The pilgrim moon pours over the solemn darkness Her waterfalls of silence, And then departs, up the long avenue of trees. The stars hide, in the glade, their light, like tears, And tremble where some train runs, lost, Baying…
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C.S. Lewis: “The scholar has lived in many times…”
The scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the nonsense that pours from the press of his own age. – C.S. Lewis
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Thomas Merton: “…They never succeed in being themselves.”
“Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints. They never succeed in being themselves…”
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“An explained thing…is almost inevitably explained away.”
“An explained thing, except for very resolute thinkers, is almost inevitably ‘explained away’. Speaking generally, it may be said that the demand for explanation is due to the desire to be rid of mystery.” Basil Willey, “The Seventeenth Century Background”, p.14
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The First Object of Government: Thwart the Majority’s Theft
From Power Line: Given that poorer citizens always outnumber the rich, the classic political philosophers held that government based on majority rule was untenable. They were of the view that it would lead to organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses. Thus Aristotle warned in The Politics, for example: “If the majority distributes…
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Douglas Wilson: on what “Twilight” says about love.
If a man treats you terribly, it is all because he loves you. If a man confesses he might kill you, you should just stay with him forever and a day. If a man abandons you without explanation, it is because he loves you so much. If your lover needs to be changed, it must…
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Gregory Nazianzen on Advent: “A bearer of flesh, but, even so, beyond all body.”
He was a man, but God. David’s offspring, but Adam’s Maker. A bearer of flesh, but, even so, beyond all body. From a Mother, but she is a Virgin. Comprehensible, but immeasurable. And a manger received him, while a star led the Magi, who so came bearing gifts, and fell on bended knee. As a…
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J.R.R. Tolkien: on “eucatastrophe”
“…the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in…
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G.K. Chesterton: “They are walking in their sleep and try to wake themselves up with nightmares.”
There comes an hour in the afternoon when the child is tired of “pretending”, when he is weary of being a robber or red Indian. It is then when he torments the cat. There comes a time in the routine of an ordered civilization when man is tired of playing at mythology and pretending that…