Notable Quotable 59

Joel Walbert

Feb 26, 2023

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

- Victor Hugo

It matters not how straight the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

- William Ernest Henley, Invictus

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

- Albert Camus

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

- Robert Frost

The solution of the problems confronting the world as a whole does not seem to lie in the creation of still bigger social units and still vaster governments whose formation is now attempted with such unimaginative fanaticism by our statesmen. It seems to lie in the elimination of those overgrown organisms that go by the name of great powers, and in the restoration of a healthy system of small and easily manageable States such as characterized earlier ages... A small-state world would not only solve the problems of social brutality and war; it would solve the problems of oppression and tyranny. It would solve all problems arising from power... that is, a small-scale social environment with all its potential for global pluralistic cooperation and largely unaffiliated self-sufficiency, by extending not centralised control but by decontrolling locally centred and nourished communities, each with its own institutional nucleus and a limited but strong and independent gravitational field...

- Leopold Kohr

Of what use is existence to the creature if it cannot know its Maker? How could men be reasonable beings if they had no knowledge of the Word and Reason of the Father, through Whom they had received their being? They would be no better than the beasts, had they no knowledge save of earthly things; and why should God have made them at all, if He had not intended them to know Him? But, in fact, the good God has given them a share in His own Image, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has made even themselves after the same Image and Likeness. Why? Simply in order that through this gift of Godlikeness in themselves they may be able to perceive the Image Absolute, that is the Word Himself, and through Him to apprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only really happy and blessed life.

- Saint Athanasius

Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is continually ready for revenge.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

- Mark Twain

Having only contempt for every existing political party, and profound hatred for democracy, I feel the blackest gloom.

- T. S. Eliot

Anyone wishing to conquer a people could do it by using this system: breaking its ties with heaven and land, introducing fratricidal quarrels and fights, promoting immorality and licentiousness, by material ruin, physical poisoning, drunkenness. All these destroy a nation more than being blasted by thousands of cannon or bombed by thousands of airplanes.”

- Corneliu Zelea Codreanu