Spiritual Quote of the Day (G. K. Chesterton, on Faith, Hope, and Charity)

“Charity means pardoning the unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.” — English man of letters (and Catholic convert) G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), Heretics (1905)

Quote of the Day (Dennis Lehane, on Boston Working-Class Humor)

“To this day… I've never met a comedian half as funny as at least five people I knew growing up. In Dorchester … my dad was part of a bar culture. He used to bring me into bars all the time and pretend, telling my mother we were at a farmers’ market so he could sneak in and have a drink on a Saturday. So I grew up listening to people talk and tell stories and they were always working-class stories. The point of any working-class story is ‘I got screwed,’ right? But [also] ‘I got a little bit of vengeance,’ like ‘I keyed his car,’ ‘I slept with his sister.’ It's a tragic story: ‘I got screwed.’ But it's got a little bit of levity in it…. I think in Irish culture, personally—and that's where Dorchester is, and Savin Hill, where I grew up— that's where we get our sense of humor, [from] the Irish. They believe that God is a prankster and we're the butt of the joke, you know.  That's something that just goes into my work.”—American crime novelist and screenwriter Dennis Lehane interviewed by Anna Kusmer for the “Say More” podcast, Boston Globe, Jan.8, 2026 episode

The image accompanying this post, showing Dennis Lehane at the 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival, was taken by David Shankbone.

Tweet of the Day (‘MichaelTrying,’ on the Results of a New Year’s Exercise Program)

“I finally have the body I want after a rigorous six-month program of lowering my expectations.”--@MichaelTrying,” quoted in Eric Zorn, “Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk! A Dozen Finalists for Tweet of the Week,” Chicago Tribune, Oct. 10, 2017

Film fans may remember the fellow in the accompanying image as Dave (played by Mark Addy) in the 1997 British comedy The Full Monty.

Trust me: you don’t want to see any more of him than what is revealed here. Suffice it to say, Dave really had to “lower his expectations” for the desperate but uproariously confidence-boosting act he and his friends resorted to!

Quote of the Day (James Allen, on How a Person Can Become ‘The Rightful Master of Himself’)

“Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.”— English philosophical writer and editor James Allen (1864-1912), As a Man Thinketh (1903)

Thanks to my friend Holly for this inspirational quote.

Quote of the Day (Daniel Patrick Moynihan, on a State ‘Tempted by Self-Interest’)

“A state that finds itself tempted by self-interest to erode traditional norms may in time regret its conduct."— American politician, diplomat and social scientist Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003), On the Law of Nations (1990)

Quote of the Day (John Ruskin, Defining ‘Fine Art’)

“Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.” —British art and social critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), The Two Paths, Lecture II: The Unity of Art, section 54 (1859)

Quote of the Day (William F. Buckley, on a Past CIA Operation)

“A dozen years ago someone remarked that the weekend’s attempted assassination of Sukarno had all the earmarks of a CIA operation: Everyone in the room was killed except Sukarno.”— Political commentator, editor, and conservative public intellectual William F. Buckley (1925-2008), “On the Right,” Danville Register (Va.), Dec. 23, 1972

Well, this weekend’s removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was more successful than that failed (and officially denied) hit on the Cold War Indonesian President. The story has it that the Central Intelligence Agency had been tracking Maduro’s activities since August.

But I doubt that we will find out soon whether the CIA under current head John Ratcliffe made any mistakes in this or any other activities since the beginning of Trump 2. In a larger sense, questions are already rising about even the wisdom of such covert operations as this one.

A warning to this effect was raised by none other than current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Within 24 hours of President Trump’s announcement of Maduro’s removal, people with memories longer than the 24-hour-news cycle were circulating Gabbard’s 2019 warning about such an operation:

“Venezuela poses no threat to the United States,” Gabbard, then a Democrat, said in a video. “Congress has not authorized the United States to go to war in Venezuela, and there’s no justification for our country to violate the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people.”