Lewis quote

"He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself." C.S. Lewis

Some of my favorite Lewis books...

and...
... and I better just stop myself since I could go on!

adventure or inconvenience?

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.  - G. K. Chesterton

A good thing to keep in mind when you discover a diaper blowout in the parking lot and you're running late and running short on extra clothes and have no wipes.*  Adventure!

* Extra prefolds in the diaper bag are a very good idea! :) 

True Dat

Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Perspective

"To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes, and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute."

-G.K. Chesterton, in What's Wrong with the World

Ouch!

I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her.
- Rodney Dangerfield

So true... I frequently have to do the verbal equivalent of sitting on my hands, because really, Micah doesn't need to come home at night and be subjected to hours of me recounting what occurred to me while hanging clothes, what the cat did today, or how annoying it was when there was nothing but junk mail in the box!

Possibilities...

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
- Douglas Adams

quotes for monday

Biography lends to death a new terror.
- Oscar Wilde

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
- Douglas Adams

Quotables

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
- Doug Larson

Ah, the marvels of technology...

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.
- Doug Larson

Flannery on Writers...

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
- Flannery O'Connor

quote of the day

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
- B. F. Skinner

This makes a similar point to one Douglas Wilson made in his talk "Devil in a Blue Dress" in the "Church and Pop Culture" Ministerial Conference, which I've just started listening through.

The technology in and of itself- internet, television, ipod, cell phone - isn't sinful. It is the way you use it that determines whether it is helpful or problematic, acceptable or sinful.

quotes

"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
- Thomas H. Huxley

"You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do."
- Olin Miller

I've got three quotes daily on my homepage, and I liked these two today.