“Violence, which plays a most conspicuous part in war, is a thing which belongs to wild beasts; wherefore we should take most diligent pains to temper it with humanity, lest by too much imitation of the beasts we forget how to be human”. Hugo Grotius Lest we forget how to be human, we should, for …
“If I am occasionally a little overdressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.” Oscar Wilde John Fetterman, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, has taken Wilde’s bon mot and flipped it on its head; not even by accident has the hulking Reading-native ever been overdressed, and by no metric has his intellectual …
“Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed; The next in majesty; in both, the last. The force of nature could no further go; To make a third, She joined the former two”. John Dryden In one’s attempt to identify the three poets …
The following is an essay/meditation from my sister project, Pneuma. If you’d like to listen to the podcast, visit my website, pneumameditations.com or search Pneuma By Daniel Finneran on any of your favorite podcast streaming platforms. Hello all you beautiful, brilliant, remarkable people, and welcome to this episode of Pneuma. The great sages of the …
“An Honest Heart and a Knowing Head” | Lessons from Thomas Jefferson on How to Live Well Read More »
It’s my habit, whenever I’m in conversation with someone of a strong and unconcealed political bent, from whom the gift of a sound civic education and a talent for an idea’s thoughtful expression haven’t been withheld, to ask him which of America’s two central documents, the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, he regards more …
Do you dare discuss religion and politics over the holiday season? It’s an ageless maxim that, when gathered with family and friends during the course of the holiday season, all discussion of politics—and, to a lesser extent, religion—should be studiously avoided. These are the two guests, unique among all possible guests, to whom it’s not …
Written 6 November 2022 There’s a shrinking number of celebrities in whom we Americans place our collective trust. A very small number, indeed, for whom, no matter the direction toward which our political preferences incline us, there’s near universal veneration. Take, as one example, the late Alex Trebek, whose name was, and yet remains, synonymous …
Use Your Discernment (So Long as You Discern Nothing Different) Read More »
Louis XVI: C’est une grande révolte! La Rochefoucault-Liancourt: Non, Sire, c’est une grande révolution. Upon learning of the fall of the Bastille in the summer of 1789, Louis XVI—the hapless (and soon to be headless) French king against whom popular opinion in the country had long since turned—responded with one of the great understatements of …
On Revolts and Revolutions: 18th-Century France and Modern China Read More »
And, just like that, Rome’s conquest of Greece was nearly complete. The strong, sturdy, ageless foundation of Hellas, upon which the rest of the civilized world then firmly stood, suddenly began to quake. Those ancient, mighty pillars by which the early Western man was raised, atop which the hundred famous city-states he inhabited were built, …