Daily Quotation

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.  It is the democracy of the dead.  Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.
~ G. K. Chesterton - Orthodoxy ~

Daily Quotation

He must increase, but I must decrease.
~ St John the Baptist - John 3.30 ~

Daily Quotation

The things you own end up owning you.
~ Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden - Fight Club ~

Daily Quotation

Christianity was preached by the [Catholic] Church before the New Testament was written--that is simply a [sic] historical fact.  It is also a fact that the apostles wrote the New Testament and the Church canonized it, deciding which books were divinely inspired.  I knew, from logic and common sense, that a cause can never be less than its effect.  You can't give what you don't have.  If the Church has no divine inspiration and no infallibility, no divine authority, then neither can the New Testament.  Protestantism logically entails Modernism.  I had to be either a Catholic or a Modernist.  That decided it; that was like saying I had to be a patriot or a traitor.
~ Dr Peter Kreeft - Hauled Aboard the Ark ~

Be careful what you ask for...

Asking God to make you a stronger person can be a dangerous thing to do.  Just as bodybuilders like to say, 'No pain, no gain,' the same concept applies to virtue as well.  Just as a warrior cannot become a Marine without first undergoing The Crucible so we cannot become stronger people without first undergoing suffering.  You cannot get something for nothing.  The point?  When you ask God to make you strong, don't expect Him to just give it to you.  After all, He doesn't owe you anything, He's God.  He will make you strong, but you probably won't like the way He goes about doing it.  Suck it up and stick it out and when you look back you'll see how all the shit you went through was totally worth it.

Daily Quotation

A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is about his last breath.  He should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgement of his friends on them.  He should never leave such a thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spurt at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur.
~ Mark Twain - The Last Words of Great Men ~

Daily Quotation

An infantry company is an unbelievably destructive component in a modern military force.  It is designed and equipped to be self-contained and independent.  A company commander has at his disposal his own organic supporting arms--60 mm mortars and M-60 machine guns--and he can reasonably expect support from artillery and air units of virtually any strength.  As such, an infantry company and its commander wield enormous destructive power.

A captain commanding an infantry company is the highest-ranking officer who lives with and like the grunts he commands.  He has everything to do with policy execution but almost nothing to do with policy formation.  Though often out of sight of his superiors, he is almost never out of radio contact with them or other higher headquarters.
~ Colonel Richard D. Camp, Jr, USMC (Ret) - Lima-6:  A Marine Company Commander in Vietnam ~

Daily Quotation

'My children, you listen when you like the preacher; but if the preacher does not suit you, you turn him into ridicule...  We must not think so much about the man.  It is not the body that we must attend to.  Whatever the priest may be, he is still the instrument that the good God makes use of to distribute His holy Word.  You pour liquor through a funnel; whether it be made of gold or of copper, if the liquor is good it will still be good.'
~ St John-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, Curé d'Ars ~

Daily Quotation

'Is this a courting or a donnybrook?  Have the good manners not to hit the man until he's your husband and entitled to hit you back.'
~ Barry Fitzgerald as Michaleen Oge Flynn - The Quiet Man ~

Daily Quotation

'Now the object of the theological virtues is God Himself, Who is the last end of all, as surpassing the knowledge of our reason.  On the other hand, the object of the intellectual and moral virtues is something comprehensible to human reason.  Wherefore the theological virtues are specifically distinct from the moral and intellectual virtues.'
~ St Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologiæ ~

Daily Quotation

'Sir, so far as possible I hear Mass each day and I go to my knees and tell these beads each night.  If that offends you, then I pray God may spare me the indignity of representing you in Parliament.'
~ Hilaire Belloc to an anti-Catholic heckler - 1906 Campaign Speech ~

Daily Quotation

From the hagg and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye,
All the spirits that stand by the naked man
In the Book of Moons defend ye!
That of your five sound senses
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from your selves with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.

Of thirty bare years have I
Twice twenty been enragèd,
And of forty been three times fifteen
In durance soundly cagèd.
On the lordly lofts of Bedlam,
With stubble soft and dainty,
Brave bracelets strong, sweet whip's ding-dong,
With wholesome hunger plenty.

With a thought I took for Maudlin
And a cruse of cockle pottage,
With a thing thus tall, sky bless you all,
I befell into this dotage.
I slept not since the Conquest,
Till then I never wakèd,
Till the roguish boy of love where I lay
Me found and stripped me naked.

I know more than Apollo,
For oft, when hee lies sleeping,
I see the stars at bloody wars
In the wounded welkin weeping;
The moon embrace her shepherd,
And the queen of Love her warrior,
While the first doth horn the star of morn,
And the next the heavenly Farrier.
~ From Tom O'Bedlam - 17th Century Ballad~

Daily Quotation

'Life in the Holy Spirit fulfills the vocation of man.  This life is made up of divine charity and human solidarity.  It is graciously offered as salvation.'
~ Catechism of the Catholic Church - Paragraph 1699 ~

Daily Quotation

'I spent my whole life trying not to be careless.  Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men.'
~ Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone - The Godfather ~

Daily Quotation

'Men are basically smart or dumb and lazy or ambitious.  The dumb and ambitious ones are dangerous and I get rid of them.  The dumb and lazy ones I give mundane duties.  The smart ambitious ones I put on my staff.  The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders.'
~ Field Marshal Erwin Rommel ~

The Saints are back! (And finally at a screen near me)

A month ago, an event occurred that I have been waiting on for the last five years.  That's right boys and girls, The Boondock Saints II:  All Saints Day hit theatres.  The terrible problem at play is the fact that it was initially released in a limited number of theatres in the Northeast and on the West Coast. That all changed this past Friday when Apparition expanded distribution to include major metropolitan areas.  The result?  Necessary action, my friends.  Thursday, a friend and I made the trek to Marietta, GA to catch the matinée and it was everything we had expected and more.  All I have to say is that if you are a Boondocks fan, you need to see this and if you don't know what I'm talking about then check out the original and then hit the theatre.  I should point out that there were around ten cars total in the theatre parking lot.  When you subtract staff from that number you get pretty close to the five of us that watched this movie (which is good for a Thursday shortly after 1:00 pm).  That's right, the odds are good that the only people in the house watching other movies were projectionists.

As for those of you who think it's just a rip-off of Tarantino then you don't know what you are talking about.  While Troy Duffy and Quentin Tarantino both utilise aesthetic violence in their work, there is a philosophical difference in how they do this.  That's right folks, philosophical.  You can't escape it because you never cease to think and thus we are all philosophers.  The point is that artistic violence utilised by Tarantino is philosophically postmodernist.  At the end of the day, you feel no real connexion to Tarantino's characters.  On the other hand, when Connor and Murphy kill gangsters, you identify with them.  Duffy's characters kill for a higher  reason than simply advancing the plot:  to destroy evil.  Tarantino's characters kill to advance the plot and sometimes simply because they can.  The point is that the only thing in common between Duffy and Tarantino is the presence of artistic violence.  Everything else is different in nature even as far as the plots in question.  The closest Tarantino has ever gotten to a story of divine retribution like Boondocks is his revenge epic, Kill Bill I & II.  This difference is borne out in how Tarantino and Duffy shoot their fight scenes.  Tarantino's scenes are fast, extremely bloody (like a performance artist throwing paint), cut quickly and people die in fantastical ways.  Duffy's fight scenes are in slow motion, include a great deal of symbolism and imagery and people die in relatively (for a gun fight) normal ways.  Additionally, Tarantino's scenes, while choreographed are choreographed to appear chaotic.  With Duffy, his scenes are more reminiscent of a dance.  Bodies don't just fall, they fall   These differences in style are all indicative of the differences in underlying philosophy, both in general and in regard to film that these respective directors hold.  The point?  Stop painting everything with such a damn broad brush.  That's all I'm trying to say (That and I'm tired of typing this and I don't care what you think so I'm going to cut it to a close.)

So, if you are interested in seeing Boondocks II check out their website and find a theatre near you.  If you don't have the luck of the Irish, then head over to Eventful.com and add your name to the list of people that want to see it.  After all, it worked for Paranormal Activity so why not give it a shot here too?

Daily Quotation

Eye on the TV
Cause tragedy thrills me,
Whatever flavor it happens to be.

Like:

'Killed by the husband.'
'Drowned by the ocean.'
'Shot by his own son.'
'She used a poison
In his tea
Then Kissed him goodbye.'
That's my kind of story,
It's no fun till someone dies.

Don't look at me like I am a monster.
Frown out your one face, but with the other
Stare like a junkie into the TV.
Stare like a zombie
While the mother holds her child,
Watches him die.
Hands to the sky
Crying 'Why, oh why?

Cause I need to watch things die,
From a distance.
Vicariously I live while the whole world dies.
You all need it too, don't lie.
~ Tool - Vicarious ~

Daily Quotation

'He couldn't recall what it was in his reading that had begun the train of thought--yes, he could:  it had been the great brains in the towers in Stapledon's splendid Last and First Men.  He had been wont to despise emotions: girls were emotional, girls were weak, emotions--tears--were weakness.  But this morning he was thinking that being a great brain in a tower, nothing but a brain, wouldn't be much fun.  No excitement, no dog to love, no joy in the blue sky--no feelings at all.  But feelings--feelings are emotions!  He was suddenly overwhelmed by the revelation that what makes life worth living is, precisely, the emotions.  But, then--this was awful!--maybe girls with their tears and laughter were getting more out of life.  Shattering!  He checked himself:  showing one's emotions was not the thing:  having them was.  Still, he was dizzy with the revelation.  What is beauty but something that is responded to with emotion?  Courage, at least partly, is emotional.  All the splendour of life.  But if the best of life is, in fact, emotional, then one wanted the highest, purest emotions:  and that meant joy.  Joy was the highest.  How did one find joy?  In books it seemed to be found in love--a great love--though maybe for the saints there was joy in the love of God.  He didn't aspire to that, though; he didn't even believe in God.  Certainly not!  So, if he wanted the heights of joy, he must have, if he could find it, a great love.  But in the books again, great joy through love seemed always to go hand in hand with frightful pain.  Still, he thought, looking out across the meadow, still, the joy would be worth the pain--if, indeed, they went together.  If there were a choice--and he suspected there was--a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and the depths.'

~ Sheldon Vanauken - A Severe Mercy ~

More thinking early in the morning...

When we lie, whether to cover our own arses, or advance our own interests, we demonstrate a lack of faith.  A lack of faith in God and His perfect will and a lack of faith in His truth.  A lack of faith that 'All things work together unto good.'  Granted, I am not saying that lying is always a sin (more on this in a future post). What I am saying is that when we lie simply for our own benefit to keep ourselves from looking bad or to make ourselves look good, we not only commit a sin by lying, but we also demonstrate the weakness of our personal faith.

Daily Quotation

'Rome indeed, has not only preserved the original poetry in Christianity; it has also made capital additions to that poetry--for example, the poetry of the saints, of Mary, and of the liturgy itself.  A solemn high Mass must be a thousand times as impressive to a man with any genuine religious sense in him, as the most powerful sermon ever roared under the big-top...  In the face of such overwhelming beauty, it is not necessary to belabor the faithful with logic; they are better convinced by letting them alone.'
~ H. L. Mencken - 'Holy Writ' from H. L. Mencken's Smart Set Criticism ~

Daily Quotation

'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'
~ William Shakespeare - Hamlet ~

Daily Quotation

'Very hard ethical questions are involved,' he went on.  'You are to be made into a good boy, 6655321.  Never again will you have any desire to commit acts of violence or to offend in any way whatsoever against the State's Peace.  I hope you take all that in.  I hope you are absolutely clear in your own mind about that.'  I said:

'Oh, it will be nice to be good, sir.'  But I had a real horrorshow smeck at that inside, brothers.  He said:

'It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321.  It may be horrible to be good.  And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds.  I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this.  What does God want?  Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness?  Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?'

~ Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange ~

Daily Quotation

'We're very lucky in the band in that we have two visionaries, David and Nigel.  They're like poets, like Shelley and Byron.  They're two distinct types of visionaries, it's like fire and ice, basically.  I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.'
~ Harry Shearer as Derek Smalls - This is Spinal Tap ~

Daily Quotation

'The first step of humility is unhesitating obedience, which comes naturally to those who cherish Christ above all.  Because of the holy service they have professed, or because of the dread of Hell and for the glory of everlasting life, they carry out the superior's order as promptly as if the command came from God Himself....  This very obedience, however, will be acceptable to God and agreeable to men only if compliance with what is commanded is not cringing or sluggish or half-hearted, but free from any grumbling or any reaction of unwillingness.  For the obedience shown to superiors is given to God.'
~ St Benedict of Nursia - The Rule of St Benedict in English ~

Daily Quotation

'The virtue of novenas, is that they keep you at it for nine consecutive days and the human attention being what it is, this is a long time.  I hate to say most of these prayers written by saint-in-an-emotional-state.  You feel you are wearing somebody else's finery, and I can never describe my heart as "burning" to the Lord (who knows better) without snickering.'
~ Flannery O'Connor - The Habit of Being ~

Daily Quotation

'That's it,' said Wilson. 'Worst one can do is kill you. How does it go? Shakespeare. Damned good. See if I can remember. Oh, damned good. Used to quote it to myself at one time. Let's see. "By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next." Damned fine, eh?'

He was very embarrassed, having brought out this thing he had lived by, but he had seen men come of age before and it always moved him. It was not a matter of their twenty-first birthday.

It had taken a strange chance of hunting, a sudden precipitation into action without opportunity for worrying beforehand, to bring this about with Macomber, but regardless of how it had happened it had most certainly happened. Look at the beggar now, Wilson thought. It's that some of them stay little boys so long, Wilson thought. Sometimes all their lives. Their figures stay boyish when they're fifty. The great American boy-men. Damned strange people. But he liked this Macomber now. Damned strange fellow. Probably meant the end of cuckoldry too. Well that would be a damned good thing. Damned good thing. Beggar had probably been afraid all his life. Don't know what started it. But over now. Hadn't had time to be afraid of the buff. That and being angry too. Motor car too. Motor cars made it familiar. Be a damn fire eater now. He'd seen it in the war work the same way. More of a change than any loss of virginity. Fear gone like an operation. Something else grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear.

From the far corner of the seat Margaret Macomber looked at the two of them. There was no change in Wilson. She saw Wilson as she had seen him the day before when she had first realized what his great talent was. But she saw the change in Francis Macomber now.

~ Earnest Hemingway - The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber ~

Fail!

While pouring concrete today, I realised that in all my excitement over the birthday of the Marine Corps, I completely forgot about Veterans Day.  To quote Homer Simpson: 'Doh!'  However, that was yesterday, and anyone who knows me well knows that I'm too lazy to fix that.  I'm just going to apply Reaganomics to it.  Everything I put up for the Marine Corps birthday will trickle down to Veterans Day.  Yeah, so I'm twisting economic theory in a way that doesn't work.  Sue me.  Keynesians do it all the time.   Thanks John Maynard! 

Had this thought early this morning...

Savour every word of every Hail Mary you pray as if it were a bite of the last, best meal you were to eat before death.

Daily Quotation

'In a world in which falsehood is powerful, the truth is paid for with suffering. The one who desires to avoid suffering, to keep it at bay, keeps life itself and greatness at bay; he cannot be a servant of truth and thus a servant of faith.'

~ Pope Benedict XVI ~

Daily Quotation

'He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.'

~ Douglas Adams - Life, The Universe and Everything ~

EXTRA

In honour of the 234th birthday of the USMC, we have some extra items of note for your mortal meditation:

'The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!'

~ First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt ~

'We have two companies of Marines running rampant all over the northern half of this island, and three Army regiments pinned down in the southwestern corner, doing nothing. What the Hell is going on?'

~ General John W. Vessey, Jr, USA in regard to Operation Urgent Fury (Grenada, 1983) ~

'In the Army, shock troops are a small minority supported by a vast group of artisans, laborers, clerks and organizers. In the Marines there are practically nothing but shock troops."

~ John Lardner, combat correspondent in a report on the battle of Iwo Jima (1945) ~

'Some people live an entire lifetime and wonder if they have ever made a difference in the world, but the Marines don't have that problem.'

~ President Ronald Reagan ~

'The United States Marine Corps with its fiercely proud tradition of excellence in combat, its hallowed, and its unbending code of honor, is part of the fabric of American myth.'

~ Thomas E. Ricks, author - Making the Corps ~

'We are the United States Marines, and for two and a quarter centuries we have defined the standards of courage, esprit, and military prowess.'

~ General James L. Jones, Jr, USMC (32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps) ~

'The future success of the Marine Corps depends on two factors: first, an efficient performance of all duties to which its officers and men may be assigned; second, promptly bringing this efficiency to the attention of the proper officials of the government and the American people.'

~ Lieutenant General John A. Lejeune, USMC (13th Commandant of the Marine Corps) ~

'I selected an enormous Marine Corps emblem to be tattooed across my chest. It required several sittings and hurt me like the Devil, but the finished product was worth the pain. I blazed triumphantly forth, a Marine from throat to waist. The emblem is still with me. Nothing on earth but skinning will remove it.'

~ Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC on his time as a lieutenant in Asia ~

'Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?'

~ Sergeant Major Daniel Daly, USMC at the Battle of Belleau Wood (France, 1918) ~

'Remember, you are the 1st Marines! Not all the Communists in Hell can overrun you!'

~ Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell 'Chesty' Puller, USMC at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir (Korea, 1950) ~

Daily Quotation

'I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.'

~ Sir Winston Churchill ~

Daily Quotation

'It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.'

~ Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden - Fight Club ~

Daily Quotation

'What the American people want to do is fight a war without getting hurt. You can't do that anymore than you can go into a barroom fight without getting hurt.... Unless the American people are willing to send their sons out to fight an aggressor, there isn't going to be any United States. A bunch of foreign soldiers will come over and take our women and breed not only another race of people but a hardier race of people.'
~ Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell 'Chesty' Puller, USMC ~

Daily Quotation

Jesus loved Judas, Judas kissed Jesus.

Caesar loved Brutus, Brutus killed Caesar.

I am the king of all that I survey,

Beware my son it could be yours one day.

Heir transparent to a dynasty,

Dog-emperor of woe and misery.

It sent me mad but now it makes me furious.

I'm shadowed by a doubt--I Dubious.

~ Skyclad - I Dubious ~

Daily Quotation

'Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.'

~ Benjamin Franklin ~

Daily Quotation

'It looked like it had eaten a three-year old.'

~ Personal friend Ben Perry, in reference to an extremely fat cat named Ricky Busby ~

Daily Quotation

'I know we should neither be too credulous nor too critical and should hold the middle in all things to find the point of truth and virtue. But I also know that charity easily leads us to believe all that is not contrary to faith or good morals: 'Charity believes all things' (I Corinthians 13:7), whereas pride easily leads us to deny almost all well-authenticated narratives, on the pretext they are not in Holy Scripture.

'Such pretext is one of the devil's snares. Heretics who deny Tradition have fallen into it, and critics of our time are falling into it unawares. These critics refuse to believe what they do not understand or what is not to their liking. They are motivated by pride and a distorted view of their own mind's sufficiency.'

~ St Louis Mary Grignion de Montfort - The Secret of the Rosary ~

Daily Quotation

'If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.'

~ Samuel L. Jackson as Jules Winnfield - Pulp Fiction ~

Daily Quotation

'No Delta flight in the free world can bypass Atlanta.'

~ John Grisham - The Firm ~

Daily Quotation

'A poem should not mean

But be.'

~ Archibald MacLeish - Ars Poetica ~

Daily Quotation

'Paganism was the largest thing in the world and Christianity was larger; and everything else has been comparatively small.'

~ GK Chesterton ~