“A negative holiness is far from being acceptable to God.”— John Colquoun, The Law and the Gospel
“My head is just a hat-place.”—Rogers and Hart, “A Ship Without a Sail”
“Now before I set about arguing these things, there is a cloud of skirmishers, of harmless and confused modern skeptics, who ought to be cleared off or calmed down before we come to debate with the real doctors of the heresy.”— Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils
“Quid enim est aut tam admirabile, quam ex infinita multitudine homium existere unum, id quid, quod omnibus natura sit datum, vel solus, vel cum paucis facere possit?”[For what is so marvelous as that, out of the endless multitude of man, a single being should arise, who either alone or with only the help of a few can make effective a faculty that nature has given to all?]—Cicero, De Oratore I.viii
“For what faithful schoolteacher, or teacher of any discipline or art, thinks that it is enough to have recommended good authors to his students, or to have handed on the rules of disciplines and arts, and does not also examine his students on what he explained or shared in an effort to get them to learn better, questioning them to see how each has understood the matter and giving them an opportunity to ask him about anything that has not been well enough understood?”—Bucer, De Regno Christi
“In all ages of the world men have dreamed of a state of perfection, which has been, and is to be, but never is, and seems to disappear under the necessary conditions of human society. The uselessness, the danger, the true value of such political ideals have often been discussed; youth is too ready to believe in them; age to disparage them.”— Benjamin Jowett, Introduction to Plato’s Statesman
“For one of the principle advantages of law is not merely that it enforces honesty, but that it makes men act in the same way, and requires them to produce the same evidence of their acts.— Ibid
“Very good, Socrates; and, if you continue to be not too particular about names, you will be all the richer in wisdom when you are an old man.”—Plato, Statesman
“Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumber’d, heavenly goddess, sing! That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reign the souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain…”
“Let great Achilles, to the gods resigned, To reason yield the empire o’er his mind.”—Bk I
“For our return we trust the heavenly powers; Be that their care; to fight like men be ours.”
“Behold them weeping for their native shore…”
“Then Nestor thus—“These vain debates forbear, Ye talk like children, not like heroes dare. Where now are all your high resolves at last?”—Bk II (Iliad, Pope’s translation)
“Let great Achilles, to the gods resigned, To reason yield the empire o’er his mind.”—Bk I
“For our return we trust the heavenly powers; Be that their care; to fight like men be ours.”
“Behold them weeping for their native shore…”
“Then Nestor thus—“These vain debates forbear, Ye talk like children, not like heroes dare. Where now are all your high resolves at last?”—Bk II (Iliad, Pope’s translation)
“Metaphors have the benefit of holding the most truth in the least space.”—Orson Scott Card, via Brent Pinkall
“What is a word?” “The mind’s snitch.”—Alcuin, De Grammatica, trans. by Tim Griffeth in conversation
“Politicians don’t care why you hate each other; they just need you to hate each other.”—Walter Kirn, Disputatio 06/09/24
