Mary Ellen

“Part of our problem is that those twelve years of schooling are in large part an enormous waste of time, because very little of the true, the good, and the beautiful is learned there. School is the asylum where we send children whom we do not know what to do with otherwise. They learn no grammar there, very little history, no geography, very little of their language’s literary heritage. They get some math, but in a protracted and mind-dulling way, and some science, but very little of the world that is near their hands and eyes.”
― Anthony M. Esolen, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture

“I don't think that we should underestimate the capacity of tenderness that poetry opens within us.”
― Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry

“Your little choices become habits that affect the bigger decisions you make in life.”
― Elizabeth George

“But who would build the roads if there were no government?

You mean to tell me that 300 million people in this country and 7 billion people on the planet would just sit around in their houses and think “Gee, I’d like to go visit Fred, but I can't because there isn’t a flat thing outside for me to drive on, and I don’t know how to build it and the other 300 million or 7 billion people can’t possibly do it because there aren’t any politicians and tax collectors. If they were here then we could do it. If they were here to boss us around and steal our money and really inefficiently build the flat places, then we would be set. Then I would be comfortable and confident that I could get places. But I can’t go to Fred’s house or the market because we can’t possibly build a flat space from A to B. We can make these really small devices that enable us to contact people from all over the word that fits in our pockets; we can make machines that we drive around in, but no, we can’t possibly build a flat space.”
― Larken Rose