Quotations

 

Otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultura. (Leisure without books is death, or the burial of a living man.) 

Seneca

Dear boy, you can do anything when you have style. 

Sir Hardy Amies, the tailor. 

The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things.

Hans Christian Andersen

The strongest witness is the vast population of the earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs; as our demands grow greater, our complaints against Nature's inadequacy are heard by all. The scourges of pestilence, famine, wars and earthquakes have come to be regarded as a blessing to overcrowded nations since they serve to prune away the luxuriant growth of the human race.

Tertullian (early Christian polemicist). How unlike modern clerics during the Covid pandemic.

καίτοι σκέψασθε, ὦ ἄνδρες· οὐ γὰρ ἀποστήσομαι τῶν παλαιῶν· ἐφ' οἷς γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι ποιοῦντες ἐφιλοτιμοῦντο, ταῦτα δικαίως ἂν ὑμεῖς ἀκούσαντες ἀποδέχοισθε.

Now pay close attention, for I am not about to turn away from the men of old. Justice demands that you listen to the deeds for which they won respect and take them to heart.

Lycurgus, (early Spartan lawgiver) Against Leocrates (translated by Edward M. Harris)

From quiet homes and first beginning, 

Out to the undiscovered ends, 

There's nothing worth the wear of winning, 

But laughter and the love of friends.

Hilaire Belloc, who later disowned the quatrain, saying that it wasn't true.

Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots' and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.

Sir John Betjeman, written in the 1940s and set in the Blitz. Boots' library and free speech have gone now, of course. Only the British class system keeps the country together, despite racial cantonisation.

Babylon Bee got removed from Twitter for calling (transgender) Admiral Rachel Levine the Man of the Year. These two think it was not funny.

..only commercial running in Canada with all caucasians in it is for assisted suicide. They aren't even being subtle...

You cannot advertise in Canada without visible minorities represented...somehow this commercial is allowed..this is intentional.

posted by
@TheMarcitect

“The Covid phenomenon has provided an invaluable training session in public mind-control techniques: the formula was refined – with the assistance of sophisticated advertising and opinion-forming advice – to an astonishingly successful blend of mass anxiety (your life is in danger) and moral coercion (you are putting other people’s lives in danger).

“But it was not just the endless repetition of that message that accomplished the almost universal, and quite unexpected, compliance. It was the comprehensive suppression of dissent even when it came fexpert sources – and the prohibition on argument even when it was accompanied by counter-evidence – that really did the trick.

“If the laws of the land do not permit you to stamp out all such deviant opinions, you can simply orchestrate an avalanche of opprobrium and disrepute on those who express them so that their professional reputations are undermined. But that is yesterday’s battle. Covid – as a historic event – is over. Let’s talk about how the Fear programme, now an accepted part of the armoury of democratic politics, is likely to work in the present and future. As it happens, there is what looks like a remarkably similar model of anxiety-plus-moral-blackmail being applied to the matter of climate change. Note: these observations have no bearing on whether or not there is a true “climate crisis”.

Janet Daley, Daily Telegraph, December 19, 2022

Tom Fowdy

@Tom_Fowdy

I still can't get over just how fast the narrative switched from "China's zero COVID is evil and brutal" to "Chinese people are suffering a COVID disaster and are dying in large numbers". The change was so fast they didn't even try to hide the contradictions.