Category: Commonplace Book

Stevn has a good post up on recollection.

Serva ordinem, et ordo servabit te “Serve order and order will serve you.” (encountered in this article on family finances)

O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness, And every gain divine. O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam, Undimmed by human tears! America!… Continue reading Memorial Day

Thanks to Narwen via Gerard for the reminder. Chesterton loved children, and was often tapped to play Old King Cole in pageants. Here’s some verse by Chesterton that always gives me the giggles: Old King Cole Was a merry old soul And a merry old soul was he He called for his pipe and he… Continue reading Happy Birthday GKC!

Learn more about Titivillus, “The Patron Demon of Scribes” now back in business as the scourge of bloggers, here. Link courtesy of Titivillus himself, via his comment over at Moloch’s.

I have the can’t remember where I read that blues. A while ago I came across a passage in a book of spiritual reading, a warning that anyone who was going to make a serious attempt to grow in the Christian life was going to start running into… opposition, perhaps from annoyed friends or even… Continue reading Have you read this passage?

From Cella’s Review: “For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution.” — Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism Revisited

Today’s poem at Flos Carmeli is Leigh Hunt’s Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard. I would be surprised if Hunt didn’t intend that poem to be amusing, as well as these two: To a Fish You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced, Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea, Gulping salt-water everlastingly, Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be… Continue reading Two more from Leigh Hunt