"It was a pleasure to burn.


It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame."

- Opening Lines of Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

"God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pain; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." - C.S. Lewis

Facts about boys in Australia:

Boys outnumber girls by 20:1 in juvenile justice facilities in Australia. Boys are less likely to complete their secondary education or proceed to tertiary education.

Boys are many times more likely than girls to suffer accidental death. Boys under 5 years of age are almost four times more likely than girls to be killed by their parent(s) or other carer.

Young males are between 4 to 7 times more likely to take their lives than girls, a difference which has emerged only in the last 30 years. In fact, much of the gender disparity in outcomes in health, education and welfare, of which the above is a sample, has emerged or worsened over this period of time.

'Roe' sues to overturn Roe v. Wade decision

The woman known as "Roe" in the landmark Supreme Court case that struck down all state laws restricting abortion is filing a motion in federal court today to overturn the 1973 decision.

Link to the WorldnetDaily site article
- WorldNetDaily.com

The little things make up fathers' lasting legacies
- USA Today
I wonder whether fathers ... have any idea of how mighty are the small, day-by-day things that they think pass unnoticed and how the 'great' things they do fade so quickly....

He was married to my mother for 60 years and in that time, never even looked (and I mean did not even look, literally) at another woman. If a pretty woman walked down the street by us, he averted his eyes, like a monk.

In becoming Catholics we came to a church that looked wider and deeper than the sentimental, utilitarian and political arguments. We came to a church that looked to more ancient and venerable sources of authority. We wanted a church that had the ability to weigh not only the opinion of the living, but through her veneration of tradition, was able to value the opinion of that most neglected of majorities: the dead. Furthermore, this church not only considered the past, but she looked to the future. She listened to the vociferous demands of our sad, confused and ageing minority in the West, but she also considered the needs and the opinions our young brothers and sisters in Eastern Europe, Asia and the Southern Hemisphere.

Found in this article.

Dwight Longenecker. "A Prophecy Fulfilled." The Catholic Herald.

My Top 5 Books of Recent Time - Fiction

I was going to call this list My Top 5 Books of All Time, until I noticed that I had read all of them in the last 3 years. In no particular order. Here are the books, a short comment, and the opening lines. I have only included two here, but they are definites in the top five.

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Achingly beautiful, moving, subtle, rereadable. A tale of sacrifice and love and triumph. Lewis described it as his best work, who am I to argue.

I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of gods. I have neither husband nor child, nor hardly a friend, through whom they can hurt me. My body, this lean carrion that still has to be washed and fed and have clothes hung about it daily with so many changes, they may kill as soon as they please. The succession is provided for. My crown passes to my nephew.

Watership Down, by Richard Adams
Who could predict that a 20 something year old male would choose a book about rabbits for a favourite. Yet I have. Rereadable, entrancing, a tale of conflict and friendship, of loyalty and love. Sniff.

The primroses were over. Toward the edge of the wood, where the ground became open and sloped down to an old fence and a brambly ditch beyond, only a few fading patches of pale yello still showed among the dog's mercury and oak-tree roots.

Psst - Ever wished you were Cary Grant, here's how

I have some advice about how to buy clothes. It is digestable. Here's a sampling of the good stuff.

Without suits, men would have nothing. In the hierarchy of style, a good suit remains a man’s only trump card...It is designed to make you look better, to break boundaries between social classes, to make a small man tall with pinstripes or a fat man rich with soft wools. ... in short ... It is, in its best forms, a complete outfit that will never fail you.

"Suits are made of wool or cotton, and their variations. Additional fabrics need not apply."

They point out four essential suits


The Basic Black "If you only own one suit, this is it."
Navy Blue for business, with black or brown
The Classic Gray which can be worn with patterns.
Any of the above, with pinstripes.


The Morning News's Men's Style Guide

Other Advice for me!!!

Cuffs – these help the pants to hang properly by providing a little weight at the bottom. They look better on someone with long legs, so the shorter man should definitely avoid them. Everyone else should stick to a maximum 1" cuff for best effect.

‘Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.’
– Cary Grant

if it were up to you, would you like there to be a God?

You will rail against your work and worry that is it not right. You will question your decisions and disorder will fertilise your soul. But it is not you that are railing, but nature that rises against injustice.

This prophecy was never actually spoken and not just because it is overly wordy, nevertheless it does contain some truth. Ecomomics as if people mattered was the subtitle of a book by Schumacher an ecomonist who questioned the disregard of the human in world affairs. His book was a minor revelation, 20 or so years on Joseph Pearce has written a follow up book.

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. - Winston Churchill on the eve of Britain's entry into World War II

"And you really live by the river? What a Jolly Life."
"By it and with it and on it and in it," said Rat. "It's my world and I don't want any other. What it hasn't got is not worth knowing. Lord, the times we've had together. Whether in winter or summer, spring or autumn, it's always got its fun and excitement."

-Rat to Mole, Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows

Till We Have Faces - First Lines
I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of gods. I have neither husband nor child, nor hardly a friend, through whom they can hurt me. My body, this lean carrion that still has to be washed and fed and have clothes hung about it daily with so many changes, they may kill as soon as they please. The succession is provided for. My crown passes to my nephew.

The first lines of Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis

Thursday, May 29, 2003 - Chesterton's Birthday
I have always loved the work of G.K.C, the english journalist, artist and philosopher. He was born on this day many years ago. Here are a few quotes:

" If a man cannot make a fool of himself, we may be quite certain that the effort would be superfluous. "
"Right is right, even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong about it. "
"Books without morality in them are books that send one to sleep standing up. "
"The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."
"You cannot make a success of anything, even loving, without thinking. "
"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. "
"Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head. "
"A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice."
"We are fighting about God: there can be nothing so important as that. "

These quotes have been taken from Quenta Narwenion