That's How Winning is Done

I just like this. Fires me up.

The Tyrant's Forge

Much to think about in this short quote. Read it three times. I found that in a single reading I tended to catch only the buzzwords, but not some of the more fundamental ideas.

"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."

-Patrick Henry

Right Freely

Fascinating quote from Martin Luther that was recently posted on internetmonk:

“Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.” 

Now I'm pretty sure that will twist the knickers of more than a few folks, and tickle a few others. Whichever camp you fall in, just meditate on that for a minute. There is much worth considering.

Worth reading Michael Spencer's explication and the comments of his readers. I especially like the story of the orthodox priest and the catechumen.

Do Gooders

Not a HUGE fan of Thoreau. A few quotes, too often repeated, and usually in a manner that suggests that they must contain such wisdom as will answer all questions. Nevertheless, every once in a while I come across something surprising and revealing.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life...There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. ... Do not ... be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world.

From Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Stolen Thoughts on Food

I love food. I love eating it, and I have been known to even do a passable job of preparing it. I love talking about food as much as I like talking about anything, but I can't claim to be especially knowledgeable on the topic. But...that never really stopped me from talking about anything else. When I lack inspiration, I steal ideas. Here are a few clever things other people have said about food.

If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat?
Jo Brand

You can never have enough garlic. With enough garlic, you can eat The New York Times.
Morley Safer

I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals. I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants."
AW Brown

Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that’s bad for you!
Tommy Smothers

Sex is good, but not as good as fresh, sweet corn.
Garrison Keillor

Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.
Clifton Fadiman

Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?
Author Unknown

A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat.
Old New York Proverb

I'll bet what motivated the British to colonize so much of the world is that they were just looking for a decent meal.
Martha Harrison

A meal without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye."
Jean Antheleme Brillat Savarin

Rice is good to eat when you're really hungry and want to eat a thousand of something.
Mitch Hedberg

You Can't Really Water It Down, now Can You?

It is what it is. You can try to stuff it into politics, or science, or environment, or poetry, or mythology, or economics, or whatever. In the end, it is what it is. Moreover He is what He is. He did not tell Moses, "Tell them I AM sent you!" for nothing.


"So, let me add that Christianity is, and always has been, and always will be, not just essentially a religion of hope, but in itself, the most stupendous hope the world has ever known. Only incarnate god would have dared to hold out to us all, mere men and women of every sort and condition, sweet Mongols and pundits and professors and beauty queens, the sick and the well, the stupid and the clever, those who stumble equally with those who lend an arm, whoever and whatever we may be, a hope of being involved in a destiny set in eternity and encompassing the universe. Imagine telling caterpillars that they are destined to become butterflies . . . Carrying the image further, I imagine a TV panel of caterpillars discussing the implications of the prophecy that they were destined to become butterflies, with one of them, the genus Popilio Soperino, insisting that what the prophecy really signifies is that all caterpillars should join the Labour Party"
(Malcolm Muggeridge, Christ and the Media, pp. 44-45).

Snagged this from Blog and Mablog. I don't have much time lately to actually write anything of my own, so I am reduced to stealing quotes from other people who steal quotes.

Casual Fridays Ad Absurdam?

Found this at Blog and Mablog:

The heroin addict "was under the influence of the idea that some aspects of reality are more real than others: that the seedy side of life is more genuine, more authentic, than the refined and cultured side—and certainly more glamorous than the bourgeois and respectable side. This idea could be said to be the fundamental premise of modern popular culture"

(from Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom, p. 119).

Broad Minded Turnips

I ran into this G.K. Chesterton quote while splashing around in someone else's blog. I liked it, so I stole it and dragged it over here. Read til the end for the punch line.

The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut. Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined skepticism, when he declines to a system, when he says he has outgrown definitions, when he says he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by the very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded."

--G.K. Chesterton

Random Collisions

Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats -- approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.

Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for the night. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
--Terry Pratchett

Most people want to serve God--but only in an advisory capacity!
-- unattributed

Some people are like Slinkies. They really aren't much good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs.
--Kevin G. Barkes