“You have no enemies, you say? Alas, my friend, the boast is poor. He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure, must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done. You’ve hit no traitor on the hip. You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip. You’ve never turned the wrong to right. You’ve been a coward in the fight.”
―
―
“To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience, It is to impose yourself on places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.”
― Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
― Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― The Four Loves
― The Four Loves
“Somewhere in the last century, Western man suffered a catastrophic loss of faith—in himself, in his civilization, and in the faith that gave it birth.”
― Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World
― Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World
“The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.”
― The Merchant of Venice
― The Merchant of Venice
Christopher’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Christopher’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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