June 2010
52 posts
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“The Blue Kite makes formidable political drama because it dares to suggest that...”
– Anthony Lane, writing about this movie (via wesleyhill)
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“Miles considered Barrayaran marching bands. It wasn’t enough that humans did...”
– Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity, ch 6
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“He wanted the truth. Ruefully, he recognized that he also would prefer to have a...”
– Miles, in Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity, ch 7
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“That is, we often approach modern science as if it were magic, with the sort of...”
– David Bentley Hart
Atheist Delusions (Yale 2009), “Sorcerers and Saints,” 233
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“When you’re writing a book, multitasking is your enemy.”
– Alan Jacobs
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“If the history of philosophy is any guide, arguments for conclusions that people...”
– Michael Rea (via wesleyhill)
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“I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you look at it in...”
– Poul Anderson (via wesleyhill)
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“Benedict presented Christianity as the “champion of a high and healthy...”
– An ‘Affirmative Orthodoxy’ tour de force in Portugal via NCR
“Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else...”
– Albert Szent-Györgi (via scienceisbeauty)
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“I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.”
– from Wislawa Szymborska: Possibilities
Cited in Eco’s Infinity of Lists, the rhetoric of enumeration
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“For a short period of time, I am resting. Rest is a good thing. I am starting to...”
– Our bionic(?) intern, Sabrina Moran.
Not Allergic to Adventure…: Old Dominion 100…The Injury Report
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“We have to distinguish between referring to God and describing him; this is...”
– Arthur Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming—Natural, Divine, and Human (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 15
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“But there are some who can only admire worldly greatness, as though there were...”
– Blaise Pascal - Pensées - Section 12 —Pascal’s three orders: nature, mind, charity
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“The greatness of clever men is invisible to kings, to the rich, to chiefs, and...”
– Blaise Pascal - Pensées - Section 12 (793)
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“The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities and...”
– T. S. Eliot, introduction to Pascal’s Pensées
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Enemies of the Mere
Several years ago I was able to see a performance of a play by Peter Shaffer called Lettice and Lovage (1988). I was reminded of it again today thinking of poor Thomas Kinkade, who was arrested for DUI. What strikes me about the play is its reminder of where we are as a society. It doesn’t excerpt well, but here are a few snippets.
Lettice Douffet, a tour guide for Britain’s Preservation...
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“There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever...”
– Cardinal Henri de Lubac, quoted by Gregory Wolfe, The Painter of Lite™
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“1) The scholarly performance of academic humanists is evaluated — by colleagues,...”
– Alan Jacobs, Text Patterns: evaluating the humanities
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“Greene’s fairy-tale mystery victory is one of the most joyfully refreshing...”
– Jim Geraghty, The Beauty of Alvin Greene
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“Some things may after all be true, however unwelcome. On the contrary, she...”
– Rowan Williams, reviewing Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self by Marilynne Robinson
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“So it goes with every author who advocates the idea of uploading as a route to...”
– Mark A. Gubrud, Why Transhumanism Won’t Work
Also another case of my emerging theory that if you have to fundamentally rebrand yourself, there’s something wrong with your movement. From Transhumanism to “H+” ? Wow.
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“We have seen the horror that has resulted in the course of our history every...”
– Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word
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“Studying the humanities will give you a wealth of analogies. People think by...”
– David Brooks, History for Dollars - NYTimes.com
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“We have seen how, for Lewis, there were two kinds of cognitive experience:...”
– Michael Ward, Planet Narnia, 225
via Adiaphora: What the Intellect is Not Ready For
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“But her ideas were becoming steadily bolder. She was thinking less like a...”
– The Memory Doctor. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine
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“Yes; for to hold a thing with the intellect, is not to believe it. A man’s...”
– George MacDonald, The Truth in Jesus
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“Why is there something rather than nothing? The physicist would say ‘it’ must...”
– Marilynne Robinson, in an interview about Absence of Mind | Times Online
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“While the joy of God be unlimited creation, the special joy of man is limited...”
– G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World
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“One of the most radical things that being a Christian commits you to is the...”
– » Stanley Hauerwas (via preciseandtowering)
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“According to the unanimous testimony of the New Testament, in the man Jesus of...”
– Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, 176
via Adiaphora: It Is True, But In Hiddenness
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To a Daisy
I was excerpting a selection from Frederick Buechner’s 1998 novel The Storm today (his provocative image of the crazy saints) and thought to look up a phrase he used. It turns out to be the last line of “Renouncement,” a lovely sonnet by Alice Meynell (1847–1922), a poem that was highly praised by Ruskin and Rossetti.
Meynell wrote “Renouncement” when she was around 21, during...
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“The failure of human beings to meet their own ideals does not disprove or...”
– Michael Gerson - Mark Souder and the case for grace
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“But the discovery that resonates most strongly with the account of James Watt’s...”
– William Rosen on James Watt, The Most Useful Man Who Ever Lived
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“But the media are heavily invested in the convention by which they pretend to...”
– James Bowman, Gore Stories - The New Criterion
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“Nothing in this world or the next is a substitute for anything else; and if you...”
– T. S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and Use of Criticism
cited in Futurisms: Is Transhumanism a Religion?
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“[Scientific] Laws manifest themselves with different “emphasis” in different...”
– Steve Talbott, letter on The Logic of Science, The New Atlantis
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“Many of history’s greatest catastrophes arise from not taking people at...”
– Mark Steyn, Wishful Thinking, Now and Then, NRO
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“In our society, we give the highest prestige to a certain kind of knowledge:...”
– Matthew Crawford, Real Change News | Why one highly educated man turned to working with his hands
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“I merely claim my choice of all the tools in the universe; and I shall not admit...”
– G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (1910) 