John > John's Quotes

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.”
― Mark Twain

“Television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“Sex and breathing are about the only two things that generally work best when they are least worried about. That, I suppose, is why the same sophisticated age that has poisoned the world with Feminism is also polluting it with Breathing Exercises.”
― G. K. Chesterton

“All government is representative government until it begins to decay. Unfortunately (as is also evident) all government begins to decay the instant it begins to actually govern. (From "A Miscellany of Men")”
― Chesterton, G. K.

“It would be no good to tell people they had some good in them, for that is what they were telling themselves all day long. They have to be reminded that they have some bad in them - instinctive idolatries and silent treasons which they always try to forget.”
― Chesterton, G. K.

“A stale article, if you did it in a good, warm, sunny smile will go off better than a fresh one that you've scowled upon.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

“I am a big believer in the notion that 'the truth is out there', but don't expect it to be delivered to you in a tidy package by any mainstream media outlets.”
― David McGowan, Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream

“It was not for the entire world that Christ made atonement, for if He had, all the world would be saved.”
― Steven J. Lawson, Foundations of Grace, 1400 BC – AD 100

“All human progress is in a circle; or, to use a more accurate and beautiful figure, in an ascending spiral curve. While we fancy ourselves going straight forward, and attaining, at every step, an entirely new position of affairs, we do actually return to something long ago tried and abandoned, but which we now find etherealized, refined, and perfected to its ideal. The past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy of the present and the future.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

“Anarchists, I suppose, have no families--not, at any rate, as we understand that social relation. Organization into families may answer to a need of human nature, but in the last instance it is based on law, and therefore must be something odious and impossible to an anarchist.”
― Joseph Conrad, A Set of Six

“I am saddened by the modern system of advertising. Whatever evidence it offers of enterprise, ingenuity, impudence, and resource in certain individuals, it proves to my mind the wide prevalence of that form of mental degradation which is called gullibility. [An anarchist]”
― Joseph Conrad, A Set of Six

“If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“It has been my experience that facetiousness in the mouth of someone old enough to know better is often no more than camouflage for something far, far worse.”
― Alan Bradley, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

“It is a well-known fact that the Black Death was brought into England by lawyers.”
― Alan Bradley, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

“The great majority of habitual drinkers are born not only without desire for alcohol, but with actual repugnance toward it. Not the first, nor the twentieth, nor the hundredth drink, succeeded in giving them the liking. But they learned, just as men learn to smoke; though it is far easier to learn to smoke than to learn to drink. They learned because alcohol was so accessible.”
― Jack London, John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs

“A cocktail or two, or several, I found, cheered me up for the foolishness of foolish people. A cocktail, or several, before dinner, enabled me to laugh whole-heartedly at things which had long since ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a prod, a spur, a kick, to my jaded mind and bored spirits.”
― Jack London, John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs

“Those who seek, or have thrust upon them, unearned benefits and privileges do not know that there is a price for every benefit, a collateral required for every loan of artificial compensation. The collateral that must be given up, the price that must be paid is the dignity, honor, and self-respect of the recipient. He or she will never be exposed to the satisfaction of true achievement, and so never become a whole person.”
― William Davis Eaton, Liberal Betrayal of America and the Tea Party Firestorm

“For dinner they ate the stewed pumpkin with their bread. They made it into pretty shapes on their plates. It was a beautiful color, and smoothed and molded so prettily with their knives. Ma never allowed them to play with their food at table; they must always eat nicely everything that was set before them, leaving nothing on their plates. But she did let them make the rich, brown, stewed pumpkin into pretty shapes before they ate it.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

“When a population becomes dependent on government for the needs, and even the whims of life, it becomes “infantilized.” In this condition both the rewards for responsible behavior and the penalties for irresponsible behavior have vanished. What follows is a concept of individualism so extreme that each individual is free to invent or adopt his or her own private morality.”
― William Davis Eaton, Liberal Betrayal of America and the Tea Party Firestorm

“We cannot conceive of God bringing into existence a universe without a plan which would extend to all that would be done in that universe. As the Scriptures teach that God's providential control extends to all events, even the most minute, they thereby teach that His plan is equally comprehensive. It is one of His perfections that He has the best possible plan, and that He conducts the course of history to its appointed end. And to admit that He has a plan which He carries out is to admit Predestination.”
― Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination

“Each American generation neglects to pass on its experience to the next...our talent is for living in the present: that elation is beguiling during spells of relative calm, but each new crisis sends us reeling - because it seems unprecedented, and because what's past has become suspect.”
― Nora Sayre, Running Time: Films of the Cold War