“The Assembly of Puritan notables was no more competent to initiate successful self-government in England than a Congress of Abolitionists, in 1860, would have been competent to govern the United States.”
“As each country must, sooner or later, obtain exactly that measure of political freedom to which it is entitled, so, when it falls under a tyranny, the tyranny must be strictly conditioned by the character of the people.”
“The truth is, that a strong nation can only be saved by itself, and not by a strong man, though it can be greatly aided and guided by a strong man. A weak nation may be doomed anyhow, or it may find its sole refuge in a despot; a nation struggling out of darkness may be able to take its first steps only by the help of a master hand, as was true of Russia, under Peter the Great; and if a nation, whether free or unfree, loses the capacity for self government, loses the spirit of sobriety and of orderly liberty, then it has no cause to complain of tyranny; but a really great people, a people really capable of freedom and of doing mighty deeds in the world, must work out its own destiny, and must find men who will be its leaders—not its masters.” Teddy Roosevelt, Oliver Cromwell
“Dancing masters and tailors may rig up a fop, but they cannot make a nothing into a man. You may color a millstone as much as you like, but you cannot improve it into a cheese.”—C.H. Spurgeon, John Ploughman (Michael Foster X post)
“Since, therefore, there could be no doubt on this point, that man is the source both of the greatest help and the greatest harm to man, I set it down as the peculiar function of virtue to win the hearts of men and to attach them to one’s own service.”—Cicero, De Officies II.v
“Nihil est sceleratius prudenti orbitate” (Nothing is more wicked than prudence among the bereaved)—Pseudo-Quintilian, Declamationes Maiores X.12
“Pessima iudices causa matris est in qua plurimum lex potest” (Feeble indeed is a mother’s case, judges, if the law is its strongest point.)—Pseudo-Quintilian, Declationes Maiores XVI.5
“Tolle pecuniam: bella sustuleris, sustuleris seditiones.” (Take away money, and you will have abolished wars and civil strife)—Pseudo-Quintilian, Declamationes Minores 321
“Ut certa manus uno telo potest esse contenta, incerta plura spargenda sunt, ut sit et fortunae locus” (A sure hand may be content with one shot; an unsure one must spray them about, that fortune may have a place)—Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria IV.v
“Inde invident humiliores hoc vitium est eorum qui nec cedere volunt nec possunt contendere” (Thus inferiors envy; this is the vice of those who will not give way but cannot compete.) Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria XI.1
“Quantum enim Graeci praeceptis valent, tantum Romani quod est maius exemplis.” (For Rome is as strong in examples as Greece is in precepts, and examples are more important.) Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria XII.ii
“Mad [are] those who overeat and don’t realize that gold is better kept safe in one’s purse than allowed to run away through one’s stomach.”—Libanius, “The Miser and the Treasure,” (LD #31)
“The lesson for Christians, I think, is this. You can engage a culture, but you cannot engage a corpse. When people are living in a cemetery, you do not join them. You establish a real village, and invite them over. You first become the sorts of people who sing, who love men and women for what they are, who love children (and actually have a few), who admire innocence, and who kneel before the holy. Then you will have something of a culture – and you will find those who are weary of the alternative trying to engage you.”—Anthony Esolen, Substack, “Music and Movies We No Longer Make” 4/11/25
“LLMs are consensus-seekers, not truth-seekers. They are, at least when it comes to questions of fact, essentially an artificial Wikipedia. And that is a very useful tool. In fact, it is an extremely useful tool in an age of absolute information overload. Since at least the advent of the printing press, among our most important technologies have been information management technologies, technologies which allow us to classify, sort through, and make sense of the increasing deluge of information that our technologies are generating.”—Brad Littlejohn, Substack, “Why AI Makes Sense of the World” 4/12/25
“It is not always the imperatives of profit that drive the alienation of judgement from professionals; sometimes it is a matter of public policy. Standardized tests remove a teacher's discretion in the curriculum; strict sentencing guidelines prevent a judge from judging. It seems to be our liberal political instincts that push us in this direction of centralizing authority; we distrust authority in the hands of individuals. With its reverence for neutral process, liberalism is, by design, a politics of irresponsibility. This begins with the best of intentions—securing our liberties against the abuse of power—but has become a kind of monster that feeds on individual agency, especially for those who work in the public sector. In the private sector, the monster is created by profit maximization rather than distrust of authority, but it demands a similar diet.”— Michael Knowles, Shop Class as Soulcraft
“Humor is the Novocain used by sophists to deaden their listeners’ intellect.”—Hailey Monnie, Rhetoric Exercies 4/22/25
“So like a painted battle the war stood
Silenced, the living quiet as the dead
And in the heart of Arthur joy was lord.”
“A doubtful throne is ice on summer seas.”
“And there I saw mage Merlin, whose vast wit
And hundred winters are but as the hands
Of loyal vassals toiling for their liege.”
“They gazed on all earth’s beauty in their queen.”—“The Coming of Arthur”
“Until she let me fly discaged to sweep
“They gazed on all earth’s beauty in their queen.”—“The Coming of Arthur”
“Until she let me fly discaged to sweep
In ever-highering eagle-circles up
To the great Sun of Glory, and then swoop
Down upon all things base, and dash them dead,
A knight of Arthur, working out his will,
To cleanse the world.”
“Man am I grown, a man’s work must I do.
“Man am I grown, a man’s work must I do.
Follow the deer? Follow the Christ, the King,
Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King—
Else, wherefore born?”
“For Gareth telling some prodigious tale
“For Gareth telling some prodigious tale
Of knights, who sliced a red life-bubbling way
Through twenty folds of twisted dragon, held
All in a gap-mouthed circle his good mates
Lying or sitting around him, idle hands, charmed…”
“Say thou thy say, and I will do my deed.”—“Gareth and Lynette”
“And as the sweet voice of a bird,
Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,
Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form;
So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;
And made him like a man abroad at morn
When first the liquid note beloved of men
Comes flying over many a windy wave
To Britain, and in April suddenly
Breaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red,
And he suspends his converse with a friend,
Or it may be the labor of his hands,
To think or say, there is the nightingale.”
“for now the wine made summer in his veins,”
“O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true;
Here, through the feeble twilight of this world
Groping, how many, until we pass and reach
That other, where we see as we are seen!” 504
“While some, whose souls the old serpent long had drawn
Down, as the worm draws in the wither’d leaf
And makes it earth, hiss’d each at other’s ear
What shall not be recorded— women they,
Women, or what had been those gracious things,
But now desire the humbling of their best,
Yea, would have help’d him to it: and all at once
They hated her, who took no thought of them,
But answer’d in low voice, her meek head yet
Drooping…”
“Say thou thy say, and I will do my deed.”—“Gareth and Lynette”
“And as the sweet voice of a bird,
Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,
Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form;
So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;
And made him like a man abroad at morn
When first the liquid note beloved of men
Comes flying over many a windy wave
To Britain, and in April suddenly
Breaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red,
And he suspends his converse with a friend,
Or it may be the labor of his hands,
To think or say, there is the nightingale.”
“for now the wine made summer in his veins,”
“O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true;
Here, through the feeble twilight of this world
Groping, how many, until we pass and reach
That other, where we see as we are seen!” 504
“While some, whose souls the old serpent long had drawn
Down, as the worm draws in the wither’d leaf
And makes it earth, hiss’d each at other’s ear
What shall not be recorded— women they,
Women, or what had been those gracious things,
But now desire the humbling of their best,
Yea, would have help’d him to it: and all at once
They hated her, who took no thought of them,
But answer’d in low voice, her meek head yet
Drooping…”
“And oft I talked with Dubric, that high saint,
Who, with mild heat of holy oratory,
Subdued me somewhat to that gentleness,
Which, when it weds with manhood, makes a man.”
“The world will not believe a man repents:
And this wise world of ours is mainly right.
Full seldom doth a man repent, or use
Both grace and will to pick the vicious quitch
Of blood and custom wholly out of him,
And make all clean, and plant himself afresh.
Edyrn has done it, weeding all his heart
As I will weed this land before I go.”--Tennyson, Idylls of the King, "Geraint and Enid"
“Permissiveness and statism are essentially related. The assumption of responsibility by the state inevitably involves the surrender of responsibility, by the individual to the group and the state. Every period of social decline and of statism sees also the rise in popularity of the concept of permissiveness. It becomes a basic need of “free” man, now seen as free only in terms of emancipation from work and responsibility. Statism is liberty and permissiveness to the man in full flight from the responsibilities of manhood, in rebellion against the requirements of God, and with an immature love of play rather than work period the glorious liberty of the sons of God is to them an unspeakable bondage.”—R.J. Rushdoony, Intellectual Schiziophrenia
“In any society, great or small, as the measure of coercion rises the sense of responsibility diminishes. As men find themselves able to surrender authority to state, church, or school, both their irresponsibility increases, and their complaints. Very often, in authoritarian societies, cynical humor, complaining, and bickering are irresponsible man’s only ways of asserting his superiority to the foolish authorities without assuming any share of responsibility himself. Such cynicism and complaining exists, not as true protest, but as a form of compliance. It is not a sign of health, but of radical sickness.”—R.J. Rushdoony, Intellectual Schiziophrenia
“For he that is gentle will draw him unto gentle tatches, and to follow the customs of noble gentlemen.”—Malory, L’Morte D’Arthur Book VIII
“It is many years since I formed the habit of reading, thanks to my parents’ encouragement and my own bent for study. It has been a source of pleasure to me ever since I was a boy, and its charm grew as I grew. Indeed I have been brought up by my father to regard it as damaging to my soul and my good repute if I turned my attention in any other direction. I took good heed of the maxim, ‘cupias quodcumque necesse est’ and made myself as a young man positively want what I could not properly help but want.”— William of Malmesbury, II.prologue
“Logicam enim, quae armat eloquium, solo libavi auditu” (To Logic, the armorer of speech, I no more than lent an ear)—William, II. prologue
“Rex interea, strenuous et pulchre ad dormiendum factus, tanta negotia postponens oscitabat, et si quando resipuerat ut vel cubito se attolleret, confestim vel gravante desidia vel adversante fortuna in misserias recidebat.” (The king, meanwhile, active and well-built for slumber, put off such important business and lay yawning; and if ever he thought better of it so much as to rise up on one elbow, at once either sloth was too much for him or fortune was against him, and he sank back into wretchedness.)—William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regnum Anglorum II.165, on Aethelred the Unready, the first king (according to William) to pay Dane-geld
“Stulti facile possunt convince, difficile compesci.” (Fools are easy to convince but difficult to control)—Proverbial, quoted in William of Malmesbury IV.304
“…he never mocks,/For mockery is the fume of little hearts.”—Tennyson, Idylls "Guinevere"
