Commonplaces--April through June 2025

 

“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

Commonplaces: October thru December 2024

“Some students don’t know enough to tackle a dead cat.”—Dr. Gordon Wilson

“The boldness of this age is such, is not only to make a man’s words sound otherwise than when they came from him, and so traduce him; but confidently to aver that there are such things written in books, of such men, which never yet came into their thoughts, much less into their pen.—Jeremiah Burroughs, Irenicum

“Truth is the bond that keeps unity, but error is wild. You know not where to find it, nor yourselves if you give way to it. Our present times will be a testimony of this to all future generations.”— Burroughs

“Don’t talk to me of pacts. There are no binding oaths between men and lions—wolves and lambs can enjoy no meeting of the minds—they are all bent on hating each other to the death. So with you and me.”—Homer, Iliad (Fagles Bk XXII)

“Thrice miserable and lost are people whom nothing can delight except what is, if not obscene and dirty, yet inane, profitless, ridiculous, and unworthy of man.”—Bucer, De Regno Christi

“Denique cum praecipua felicitatis pars sit, ut quod sis, esse velis, nimirum totum hoc praestat compendio mea Philautia, ut neminem suae formae, neminem sui ingenii, neminem generis, neminem loci, neminem instituti, nemiminem patriae poeniteat, adeo, ut nec Irlandus cum Italo, nec Thrax cum Atheniensi, nec Scytha cum Insulis Fortunatis cupiat permutare. Et o singularem naturae sollicitudinem, ut in tanta rerum varietate paria fecit omnia.” [And since for the most part happiness consists in being willing to be what you are, my Self-love has provided a shortcut to it by ensuring that no one is dissatisfied with his own looks, talents, people, position, customs, or country. And so no Irishman would want to change places with an Italian nor Thracian with Athenian nor Scythian with an inhabitant of the Islands of the Blessed. What remarkable foresight of Nature it was, to level out all these variations and make all alike!]— Erasmus, Praise of Folly

“[These essays’] second object was to show that the acquisition of wealth was finally possible only under certain moral conditions of society, of which quite the first was a belief in the existence and even, for practical purposes, and the attainability of honesty.”— Ruskin, Unto These Last

“For no human actions ever were to intended by the maker of men to be guided by the balances of expediency, but by balances of justice. He has therefore rendered all endeavors to determine expediency futile for evermore. No man ever knew or can know, but will be the ultimate result to himself, or to others, of any given line of conduct. But every man may know, and most of us do know, what is a just and unjust act.”

“…perhaps even that the final outcome and consummation of all wealth is in the producing as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures.”

“Labor is the contest of the life of man with an opposite—the term “life” including his intellect, soul, and physical power, contending with question, difficulty, trial, or material force.”

“We continually hear it recommended by sagacious people to complaining neighbors(usually less well placed in the world than themselves), that they should “remain content in the station in which providence has placed them.” There are perhaps some circumstances of life in which Providence has no intention that people should be content. Nevertheless, the maxim is on the whole a good one; but it is peculiarly for home use. That your neighbor should, or should not, remain content with his position, is not your business; but it is very much your business to remain content with your own. What is chiefly needed in England at the present day is to show the quantity of pleasure that may be obtained by a consistent, well administered competence: modest, confessed, and laborious. We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether or not they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek—not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honoring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace.”

“We had better seek for a system which will develop honest men, then for one which will deal cunningly with vagabonds. Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.”

“No doubt work is a luxury, and a very great one. It is, indeed, at once a luxury and a necessity; no man can retain either health of mind or body without it.”—Ruskin

“Our own generation enjoys the legacy bequeathed to it by that which preceded it. We frequently know more, not because we have moved ahead by our own natural ability, but because we are supported by the strength of others, and possess riches that we have inherited from our forefathers. Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.”—John of Salisbury, Metalogicon III.4

“Imitatur ars igitur naturam, et quod ea desiderat id inveniat, quod ostendit sequatur. Nihil est enim quod aut natura extremum invenerit aut doctrina primum; sed rerum principia ab ingenio profecta sunt exitus disciplina conparantur.” [Let art, then, imitate nature, find what she desires, and follow as she directs. For in invention nature is never last, education never first; rather the beginnings of things arise from natural talent and the ends are reached by discipline.]—Rhetorica Ad Herrenium III.xxii

“Neque equus indomitus quamvis bene natura conpositus sit, idoneus potest esse ad utilitates quae desiderantur ab equo; neque homo indoctus quamvis sit ingeniosus, ad virtutem potest pervenire.” [Neither can an untrained horse, however well-built by nature, be fit for the service desired of a horse; nor can an uncultivated man, however well-endowed by nature, attain to virtue.]—IV.xlvi

“It is the nature of war that what is beneficial to you is detrimental to the enemy and what is of service to him always hurts you. It is therefore a maxim never to do, or omit doing, anything as a consequence of his actions, but to consult invariably your own interest only.”—Vegetius, De Re Militari Bk III

“Nature is infinitely stronger than the works of man; why not profit from it?”—Maurice de Saxe, My Reveries on the Art of War

“The first thing to about think about then will be the question of subsistence; without supplies no army is brave, and a great general who is hungry is not a hero for long.”

“A perfect general, like Plato’s republic, is a figment of the imagination. Either would be admirable, but it is not characteristic of human nature to produce beings exempt from human weaknesses and defects. The finest medallion have a reverse side.”

“Skepticism is the mother of security. Even though only fools trust their enemies, prudent persons never do. The general is the principle sentinel of his army.”— Frederick the Great, Instructions for His Generals

“A well-established maxim of war is not to do anything which your enemy wishes—and for the single reason that he does so wish.”

“The passage from the defensive to the offensive is one of the most delicate operations of war.”

“The effect of discussions, making a show of talent, and calling councils of war will be what the effect of these things has been in every age: they will end in the adoption of the most pusillanimous or (if the expression be preferred) the most prudent measures, which in war are almost uniformly the worst that can be adopted. True wisdom, so far as a general is concerned, consists in energetic determination.”

“War is composed of nothing but accidents, and, although holding to general principles, a general should never lose sight of everything to enable him to profit from these accidents; that is the mark of genius. In war there is but one favorable moment; The great art is to seize it.”— Napoleon Bonaparte, Maxims

“Now, for your help in this, God has given two lights to the world: the sun, the greater, to rule the day; and the moon, the lesser, to rule the night. So he has given two lights to man to guide his course: first are the scriptures, the greater, to guide man, especially in his spiritual condition, in those more immediate references he has to God, for His worship and enjoyment of communion with Him. The other is less, the light of reason, to be his guide in natural and civil things, in ordering his life for his natural and civil good. And though it is true that religion makes use of reason, and that we have help from the scriptures in our natural and civil affairs, yet these two lights each have their distinct, special use according to those distinct conditions of man.”— Jeremiah Burroughs, Irenicum

“None of this means anything if you are alone with your genius, whispering back and forth to each other cogito ergo sum until you realize you’re the same person. That was the promise of modernity and postmodernity, and you are more prey to it than you realize.”—Joffre Swait, Substack “Repent of Aloneness”

“Admittedly there are spirits so pronounced that they are unrepentant. Chief among them is marc, or grappa—brandy distilled from the leavings of the vintage. As it happens, though, I have no desire to cover it with anything. I find it delectable— full of nostalgia and the remembrance of the first afternoon on which I drank it. It is relevant of earth and stems and the resurrected soul of the grape, all combined with an overpowering suggestion of freshly painted radiators in a shoe store—which, you will concede, must be the very essence of unforgettability.”— Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb

“Let the end then of the common law be defined as the preservation, in the concerns and disputes of citizens, of an impartiality founded on statute and custom.”—Cicero, De Oratore I.lxii

“And as history, which bears witness to the passing of the ages, sheds light upon reality, gives life to recollection and guidance to human existence, and brings tidings of ancient days, whose voice, but the orators, can entrust her to immortality?”— II.ix

“But these loci can be useful only to a speaker who is a man of affairs, qualified by experience, which age assuredly brings, or by listening and reflection, which through careful study outruns age. For bring me a man as accomplished, as clear and acute in thinking, and as ready in delivery as you please; if, for all that, he is a stranger to social intercourse, precedent, tradition, and the manners and disposition of his fellow countrymen, these loci from which proofs are derived will avail him but little. I must have talent which has been cultivated; soil, as it were, not of a single plowing, but both broken and given a second plowing so as to be capable of bearing better and more abundant produce. And the cultivation is practice, listening, reading, and letters.”—II.xxx

“Together with all your other claims to distinction the greatest one was that you not only said the proper thing but also avoided saying what was not the proper thing.”—II.lxxiii

“They may anticipate that an academic system, formed upon my model, will result in nothing better or higher than in the production of that antiquated variety of human nature and remnant of feudalism, as they consider it, called ‘a gentleman.’”— Richard Henry Newman, The Idea of a University

“Just as a commander wishes to have tall and well-formed and vigorous soldiers, not from any abstract devotion to the military standard of height or age, but for the purposes of war, and no one thinks it anything but natural and praiseworthy in him to be contemplating, not abstract qualities, but his own living and breathing men; so, in like manner, when the Church founds a University, she is not cherishing talent, genius, or knowledge, for their own sake, but for the sake of her children, with a view to their spiritual welfare and their religious influence and usefulness, with the object training them to fill their respective posts in life better, and of making them more intelligent, capable, active members of society.”

“When the intellect has once been properly trained and formed to have a connected view or grasp of things, it will display its powers with more or less effect according to its particular quality and capacity in the individual. In the case of most men it makes itself felt in the good sense, sobriety of thought, reasonableness, candor, self-command, and steadiness of view, which characterize it. In some it will have developed habits of business, power of influencing others, and sagacity. In others it will elicit the talent of philosophical speculation, and lead the mind forward to eminence in this or that intellectual department. In all it will be a faculty of entering with comparative ease into any subject of thought, and of taking up with aptitude any science or profession. All of this it will be and will do in a measure, even when the mental formation be made after a model but partially true; for, as far as effectiveness goes, even false views of things have more influence and inspire more respect than no views at all. Men who fancy they see what is not are more energetic, and make their way better, than those who see nothing; And so the undoubted infidel, the fanatic, the heresiarch, are able to do much, while the mere hereditary Christian, who has never realized the truth which he holds, is unable to do anything. But, if consistency of you can add so much strength even to error, what may it not be expected to furnish to the dignity, the energy, and the influence of Truth!”

“It is no principle with sensible men, of whatever cast of opinion, to do always what is abstractedly best.”

“Compromise, in a large sense of the word, is the first principle of combination; and anyone who insists on enjoying his rights to the full, and his opinions without toleration for his neighbor’s, and his own way in all things, will soon have all things altogether to himself, and no one to share them with him.”

“Rather, in a state of society such as ours, in which authority, prescription, tradition, habit, moral instinct, and the divine influences go for nothing, in which patience of thought, and depth and consistency of view, are scorned as subtle and scholastic, in which free discussion and fallible judgment are prized as the birthright of each individual, I must be excused if I exercise towards this age, as regards its belief in this doctrine, some portion of that skepticism which it exercises towards every received but unscrutinized assertion whatsoever.”

“[The sciences] serve to transfer our knowledge from the custody of memory to the surer and more abiding protection of philosophy, thereby providing both for its spread and its advance…”

“Any secular science, cultivated exclusively, may become dangerous to Religion; and I account for it on this broad principle: that no science whatever, however comprehensive it may be, but will fall largely into error, if it be constituted the sole exponent of all things in on earth, and that, for the simple reason that it is encroaching on territory not its own, and undertaking problems which it has no instruments to solve.”

“The drift and meaning of a branch of knowledge varies with the company in which it is introduced to the student. If his reading is confined simply to one subject, however such division of labor may favour the advancement of a particular pursuit, a point into which I do not here enter, certainly it has a tendency to contract his mind. If it is incorporated with others it depends on those others as to the kind of influence which it exerts upon him. Thus the Classics, which in England are the means of refining the taste, have in France subserved the spread of revolutionary and deistical doctrines.”

“Things, which can bear to be cut off from everything else and yet persist in living, must have life in themselves; pursuits, which issue in nothing, and still maintain their ground for ages, which are regarded as admirable, though they have not as yet proved themselves to be useful, must have their sufficient end in themselves, whatever it turn out to be.”

“There is no true culture without acquirements, and philosophy presupposes knowledge. It requires a great deal of reading, or a wide range of information, to warrant us in putting forth our opinions on any serious subject; And without such learning the most original mind may be able indeed to dazzle, to amuse, to refute, to perplex, but not to come to any useful any trustworthy conclusion.”

“Again, the study of history is said to enlarge and enlighten the mind, and why? Because, as I conceive, it gives it a power of judging of passing events, and of all events, and a conscious superiority over them, which before it did not possess.”

“Such a training is a matter of rule; it is not mere application, however exemplary, which introduces the mind to truth, nor the reading of many books, nor the getting up many subjects, nor the witnessing many experiments, nor the attending many lectures. All this is short of enough; A man may have done it all, yet be lingering in the vestibule of knowledge.”

“A man of well improved faculties has the command of another’s knowledge. A man without them, has not the command of his own.”

Commonplaces: September 2024

 

“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

Commonplaces: August 2024

 

“The man who does not rein in his will to power and is at the same time very active according to the natural law is in a fair way to become an efficient megalomaniac.”—Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, in Antigone Journal “Humanities Without Humanism”

“The sentimentalist, who would subject man to the rule of impulse and passion; the pragmatic naturalist, who would treat man as a mere edified ape; the leveling enthusiast, who would reduce human differences to a collective mediocrity—these are the enemies of true human nature.”—Russel Kirk, Introduction, Literature and the American College

“Colleges had been founded for the study of abstractions, not as schools to supply entertainment and job-certification for boys and girls.”

“It is not always easy, of course, in the ebullitions of a new movement, to distinguish the man who has received the living word from the man whose access of energy is the result of being relieved of the necessity of thinking for himself. Men who have stopped thinking make a powerful force.”

“At best, what the typical college has offered its undergraduates, in recent decades, has been defecated rationality: that is, a narrow rationalism or Benthamite logical ism, purged of theology, moral philosophy, and the wisdom of our ancestors. This defecated rationality exalts private judgment and gratification of the senses at the expense of the inner order of the soul and the outer order of the republic. On many a campus, this defecated and desiccated logicalism is the best that is offered to the more intelligent students; as alternatives, they could pursue a program of fun and games, or else a program of social commitment of a baneful or silly character, wondrously unintellectual."

Commonplaces: June/July 2024

 

“She looking thro’ and thro’ me/Thoroughly to undo me,/Smiling, never speaks:/So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple…”—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Lilian”

“Tota ecclesia instar tonitrui reboat Amen.”—Jerome, 2nd Prologue to his Commentary on Galatians, in Whitaker, Disputations on Holy Scripture

“We must exactly distinguish between man’s duty and God’s purpose, there being no connection between them. The purpose and decree of God is not the rule of our duty; neither is the performance of our duty in doing what we are commanded any declaration of what is God’s purpose to do, or his decree that it should be done. Especially is this to be seen and considered in the duty of the ministers of the gospel, in the dispensing of the word, and exhortations, invitations, precepts, and threatenings, committed unto them; all which are perpetual declaratives of our duty, and do manifest the approbation of the thing exhorted and invited to, with the truth of the connection between one thing and another, but not of the counsel and purpose of God, in respect of individual persons, and the ministry of the word. A minister is not to make inquiry after, nor to trouble himself about, those secrets of the eternal mind of God, namely—whom he purposes to save, and whom he hath sent Christ to die for in particular. It is enough for them to search his revealed will, and thence take their directions, from whence they have their commissions…and when they make proffers and tenders in the name of God to all, they do not say to all, “it is the purpose and intention of God that ye should believe,” (who gave them any such power?) but, that it is his command, which makes it their duty to do what is required of them; and they do not declare his mind, what himself in particular will do.”—John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ

Commonplaces: May 2024

 

“Nec promiscuam habere ac vulgarem clementiam oportet nec abscisam; nam tam omnibus ignoscere crudelitas quam nulli.” (Neither should we have indiscriminate and general mercy, nor yet preclude it; for it is as much a cruelty to pardon all as to pardon none.)—Seneca, De Clementia I.ii

“Principum saevitia, bellum est.”—Seneca, De Clementia I.v

“The Christian, when fullest of divine communications, is but a glass without a foot; he cannot stand, or hold what he hath received, any longer than God holds him in his strong hand.”—William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour

“Many lose heaven, because they are ashamed to go in a fool’s coat thither.”—Gurnall

“Obedience, being a child of faith, partakes of its parent’s strength or weakness.”—Gurnall

“They say writing is just pushing a feather, but… writing occupies not just the fist or the foot while the rest of the body can be singing or jesting, but the whole man. As for school teaching, it is so strenuous that no one ought to be bound to it for more than ten years.”—Martin Luther, in Roland Bainton’s Here I Stand

Commonplaces: March/April 2024

“These people have only two categories, and one of them is Nazis.”—Jon Harris, Conversations That Matter Podcast

“So like a painted battle the war stood/Silenced, the living quiet as the dead,/And in the heart of Arthur joy was lord.”—Tennyson, Idylls of the King 

“Feeding on the air of entitlement of fading upper-class institutions that accomplish “little with a lot” of other people’s funds, the Harvard initiative reflected the increasing inebriation of elite American education. Focusing on stopping the world is full of books; But there are multitudes which are so ill written, they were never worth any man’s reading: and there are thousands more which may be good in

their kind, yet are worth nothing when the month for year or a progress, barring new power plants, dismantling chemical facilities, mobilizing against Israel, and other reactionary pursuits, Ivy institutions are pursuing the fancies of a declining intellectual and business elite, full of chemophobic nags and Luddite lame-ducks quacking away on their miasmic pools of old money as the world whirls past them.”—George Gilder, Life After Google

“Noise: interference in a message. Any influence of the conduit on the content: an undesired disturbance in a communications channel. Noise is commonly the distortion of content by its conduit. A high-entropy message (full of surprise) requires a low- entropy channel ( with no surprises). Surprises in the signal are information; surprises in the channel are noise.”—George Gilder, Life After Google

A Fusillade of Federalist

 Rather than overload a commonplaces post with the massive number I pulled out of my reading of the Federalist Papers (which I finally finished last month, after twelve years of attempts) I have decided to put them all in one place. Even if quote lists are not your thing, I think you will find some of these enlightening. Enjoy!

“Have we not already seen enough of the fallacy and extravagance of those idle theories which have amused us with promises of an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses and evils incident to society in every shape? Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?”—Hamilton, Madison, or Jay, The Federalist Papers No. 6

Commonplaces: January/February 2024

 

"All warfare is based on deception.”

“In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.”

“Hence the saying: if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

“The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.”

“To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”

“To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.”

Commonplaces--Nov/Dec 2023

 

“This is what defines the peculiarity of Augustine’s pilgrim city in this world: its members…refer these concerns to the enjoyment of eternal peace. Thus when a Christian, from such an eschatological perspective, affirms some secular value, some human enterprise or achievement, his affirmation will not be an simple self-identification. His peculiar posture to the world precludes identifying himself with its values without some reservation. The fullest endorsement of a secular value is tinged with criticism. What others may affirm simply as good the Christian has to subject to a more exacting standard. His good must survive the more deeply penetrating questioning from an eschatological perspective.”—R.A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine

“It is necessary in this age for the citizens of the kingdom of heaven, surrounded as they are by the lost and the impious, to be vested by temptations, so that they can be trained and tested like gold in a furnace. We ought not therefore to wish to live only with the holy and the just before the time is right; so that we might deserve to be granted it at the proper time.”—Augustine, Augustine’s Political Writings Letter 189

From Plato's Republic (Jowett translation)

“Neither ought our guardians to be given to laughter. For a fit of laughter which has been indulged to excess almost always produces a violent reaction.”—III.388

“Then if any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good.”—III.389

“Here, then, is a discovery of new evils, I said, against which the guardians will have to watch, or they will creep into the city unobserved. What evils? Wealth, I said, and poverty; the one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.”—IV.422

Commonplaces--Sep/Oct 2023

“What is really lost when a civilization wearies and grows small is confidence, a confidence built on the order and balance that leisure makes possible.”—Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization

“There is a kind of pedantry common to all the crafts which derives from the exaggeration and intemperance of those who practice them, making those affected by it seem extravagant and ridiculous. We smile with indulgence upon those drudges of the "republic of letters" who bury themselves in the learned dust of antiquity for the good of knowledge, bestow the light from this darkness upon the human

race, and commune with the dead (whom they know intimately) for the benefit of the living, whom they scarcely know. This pedantry, which is excusable somehow in scholars of the first order (prevented by their profession from circulating in the civilized world) is entirely unbearable in military men for just the opposite reason. A soldier is pedantic when he is too meticulous, when he blusters, or when he plays the Don Quixote. These faults render him as ridiculous in his profession as a musty appearance and Latin affectations do a scholar.”—Frederick the Great, Anti-Machiavel 

"You must not think that these priests were idle, or occupied only with sacrifices. An altogether greater responsibility and a greater burden

Commonplaces--August 2023

 

“So it teaches men both these truths: that there is a God we are capable of knowing, and that there is a corruption of nature which makes us unworthy of him. It is equally important for us to know both these points, and it is equally dangerous for man t know God without knowing his own wretchedness, and to know his wretchedness without knowing the Redeemer who can cure him of it. Knowledge of only one of these points leads either to the arrogance of the philosophers, who have known God and not their own wretchedness, or to the despair of the atheists, who know their wretchedness without knowing the Redeemer…Those who go astray only do so for lack of seeing one of these two things: one can then easily know God but not one’s own wretchedness, and one’s wretchedness without knowing God. But one cannot know Jesus Christ without knowing God and one’s wretchedness together.”—Pascal,

Pensees

“He is blind indeed who fancies that pardon is all we want in order to get to heaven, and does not see that pardon without a change of heart would be a useless gift. Blessed be God that both are freely offered to us in Christ’s gospel, the one as well as the other!”—J.C. Ryle, Knots Untied

“The influence of the two great philosophies upon theology was beneficial or injurious, according as the principle of Christianity was the governing or the governed factor. Both systems are theistic (at bottom monotheistic) and favorable to the spirit of earnest and profound speculation. Platonism, with its ideal, poetic views, stimulates, fertilizes, inspires, and elevates the reason and imagination, but also easily leads into the errors of gnosticism and the twilight of

Commonplaces: June/July 2023

[On John VII 37, “Let him come to Me and drink”] “Nor let him go to the heathen philosophy, which does but beguile men, lead them into a wood, and leave them there; but let him go to Christ, admit his doctrine, submit to his discipline, believe in him; come to him as the fountain of living waters, the giver of all comfort.”—Matthew Henry, Commentaries

“Wherever a new generation takes up the attack against the resisting forces of evil or against a tense obsession with a security which clings to the delusion that the disharmony of the world is fundamentally curable by cautious and correct “tactics,” it is above all necessary to maintain a lively and vigilant awareness that such fighting can only reach beyond sound and fury if it draws its strongest forces from the fortitude of the spiritual life, which dares to submit unconditionally to the governance of God. Without a consciously preserved connection with these reserves of strength, all struggle for the good must lose its genuineness and the inner conviction of victory, and in the end can lead only to the noisy sterility of spiritual pride.”—Joseph Peiper, The Four Cardinal Virtues

“Weak people are those who know the truth, but who maintain it only as far as it is in their interest to do so. Beyond that, they abandon it.”—Pascal, Pensees

“Indeed, contemporary debunking of the author and the author's explicit intentions has proceeded at such a pace that it seems at times as if literary criticism has become a jolly game of ripping out an author's shirt-tail and setting fire to it.”—D. Stienmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis” Theology Today"

“Jesus says, ‘Take freely.’ He wants no payment or preparation. He seeks no recommendation from our virtuous emotions.”—Spurgeon, Morning and Evening M. June 13

“We dread fostering men’s favorite notion that a little church-going and sacrament-receiving—a little patching, and mending, and whitewashing, and gilding, and polishing, and varnishing, and painting the outside—is all that his case requires. Hence we protest with all our heart against formalism, sacramentalism, and every species of mere external or vicarious Christianity.”—J.C. Ryle, Knots Untied

“There are times when there is a mine of deep meaning in our Lord’s words, ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” To such times we have come.”—Ryle, Knots Untied

“There are only two sorts of people who can truly be called reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart, because they do not yet know Him.”—Pascal, Pensees

“Armis munimenta, non munimentis arma tuta esse debent.”—Livy, IX.xxiii

“Ferte signa in hostem!”—Livy, IX.xxiii

“Friendships that are acquired at a price and not with greatness and nobility of spirit are bought, but they are not owned; and when the time comes they cannot be spent.”—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Commonplaces--May 2023

 

“Domesticity itself is altered beyond recognition; women no longer marry to help their husbands get a living, but to help them spend their income.”—Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture

“The cultivation of virtue requires the thick presence of virtue-forming and virtue-supporting institutions, but these are precisely the institutions and practices that liberalism aims to hollow and eviscerate in the name of individual liberty. In a deep irony, liberalism claims legitimacy based upon democratic consent, yet it ultimately hollows out the prospects for functioning democracy.”—Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed

“Yet this [government] expansion continues, largely as a response to people’s felt loss of power over the trajectory of their lives in so many distinct spheres—economic and otherwise—leading to demands for further intervention by the one entity even nominally under their control. Our government readily complies, moving like a ratchet wrench, always in one direction, enlarging and expanding in response to civic grievances, ironically leading in turn to citizens’ further experience of distance and powerlessness.”

“Perhaps above all, liberalism has drawn down on a preliberal inheritance, and resources that at once sustained liberalism but which it cannot replenish. The loosening of social bonds in nearly every aspect of life—familial, neighborly, communal, religious, even national—reflects the advancing logic of liberalism and is the source of its deepest instability."

“In this world, gratitude to the past and obligations to the future are replaced by a nearly universal pursuit of immediate gratification: culture, rather than imparting the wisdom and experience of the past so as to cultivate virtues of self-restraint and civility, becomes synonymous with hedonic titillation, visceral crudeness, and distraction, all oriented toward promoting consumption, appetite, and detachment."

Commonplaces--April 2023

 

“A great man lays upon posterity the duty of understanding him.”

“From his agonies and exultations he emerged with a great charity towards men, and something nobler than humanism. The world with all its suffering and sinning mortals was God’s world, which He had created and redeemed, and he looked upon it with a patient kindness. Of such a creed as his, and of such a temperament, quietism could not be the fruit. He must be up and doing, for he was called upon to assist in the building of the City of God….A man all his days must be busy making his soul, and forcing the world to conform to the heavenly will.”—John Buchan, Oliver Cromwell


“Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.”

“I do not know in advance what love of others means on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my human desires—all this may rather be hatred and an insidious kind of selfishness in the eyes of Christ. What love is, only Christ tells us in his Word.”

“For the mature Christian, every Scripture reading will be “too long” even the shortest one. What does this mean? The Scripture is a whole and every word, every sentence possesses such multiple relationships with the whole that it is impossible always to keep the whole in view while listening to details. It becomes apparent, therefore, that the whole of the Scriptures (and hence every passage in it as well) far surpasses our understanding.”

Commonplaces--March 2023

 

“And yet in your case [Antony], as your most familiar friends are always saying, you practice declamation to evaporate your wine, not to sharpen your wits.”—Cicero, Phillipic II.xvii

“By the most rival impulses, Conscript Fathers, in critical times the scale is turned most completely, not only in all the accidents of public affairs, but principally in war, and most of all in civil war, which as a rule is governed by opinion and rumor.”—Cicero, Phillipic V.x

Commonplaces--February 2023

 “As regards discipline, when was not prosperity to the unwary what fire is to wax, or the rays of the sun to snow and ice? David was wise, Solomon wiser; but, flattered by unlooked-for success, the one in part and the other altogether acted foolishly.”—Bernard of Clairvaux, De Consideratione II.12

“If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would be changed.”—Pascal, Pensees

“When a soldier or laborer complains about his hard work, give him nothing to do.”—Ibid.

“Too much and too little wine. If you give someone none, he cannot discover the truth. The same happens if you give him too much.”—Ibid.

“We should see [justice] enacted by all the states of the world, in every age, instead we see nothing, just or unjust, which does not change in quality with a change in climate.

Commonplaces--January 2023

 “To me nothing whatever seems lengthy if it has an end; for when that end arrives, then that which was is gone; naught remains but the fruit of good and virtuous deeds. Hours may pass, and days and months and years, but the past returns no more, and what is to be we cannot know. But whatever the times given us to live, with the same we should be content.”—Cicero, De Senectute xix

“For even if the allotted space of life be short, it is long enough in which to live honorably and well. But if a longer period of years should be granted, one has no more cause to grieve than the famers do when the pleasant springtime passes and summer and autumn come. For spring typifies youth and holds forth the promise of future fruit; while the other seasons are designed for gathering those fruits and storing them away. And this same fruit of old age, as I have often said, is the memory and abundance of blessings previously gathered.”—Cicero, De Senectute xix

“But the most desirable end of life is that which comes while the mind is clear and the faculties are unimpaired, when Nature herself takes apart the work she has put together.”—Cicero, De Senectute xx

“Only the person who bows down and worships is wise. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. After all, and note this, because He is God, a necessary limit has been imposed on the omnipotence of God in his work of creation: God cannot create gods. That would have meant cancelling out his own unique being God. Thus a contrast, specifically a contrast of subordination, of inferiority, of a lower order, had to remain between God and his highest creature. Only in the image of God, not as God, could the rational creature be created. And it is from this contrast between God and the creature as not-God that all the anxiety of the broken moral life emerges.”—Kuyper, Common Grace II 

Commonplaces--November & December 2022

 "It seems to me of practical importance that the analytical and critical bent of our age should not be expended entirely on our ancestors and that confusions should sometimes be exposed while they are still potent. It is more dangerous to tread on the corns of a living giant than to cut off the head of a dead one: but it is more useful and better fun.”—C.S. Lewis, Studies in Words

 “Contamination and barbarism are one set of names for this sort of thing: another name is vitality. Everything which is alive tends to break out into vulgarity at times. Only the dead and embalmed can preserve for ever their changeless armorial dignity.”—Dorothy Sayers, “Ignorance and Dissatisfaction” Address to the Association for the Reform of Latin Teaching, Aug. 26, 1952

 “The basis of wisdom is the wise disposal of time, and full wisdom will be the wise disposal of a whole lifetime.”—Comenius, Pampaedeia V.4 (in John Amos Comenius: A Visionary Reformer of Schools)

Commonplaces--October 2022

“In an orator, however, we must demand the subtlety of the logician, the thoughts of the philosopher, a diction almost poetic, a lawyer’s memory, a tragedian’s voice, and the bearing almost of the consummate actor. Accordingly no rarer thing than a perfected orator can be discovered among the sons of men. For attributes, which are commended when acquired singly, and that in modest degree, by other craftsmen in their respective vocations, cannot win approval when embodied in an orator unless they are all assembled in perfection.”—Cicero, De Oratore I.xxviii

“Yet assuredly endeavors to reach any goal avail nothing unless you have learned what it is which leads you to the end at which you aim.”—Ibid., I.xxix

“For to my mind he is no free man, who is not sometimes doing nothing.”—Ibid., II.vi