Good Morning Digital Neighbors! MONDAY, MONDAY, MONDAY! Grab your coffee and start your engines. Well if you are retired, I guess you can keep it in idle, but for the rest of you working souls, get in gear!😉 More quotes and opining by the Padre seems on the menu. The Forbes Book of Quotations has plenty to offer.
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. - Herbert Spencer
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Much of the wisdom of one age is the folly of the next. - Arthur Schopenhauer
All three quotes on folly seem aptly appropriate for this current age in America and perhaps all of the West. I really can't speak beyond what I see happening in American culture, but it seems to be similar in much of Europe as well.
I tend to blame Academia more than anything else, and perhaps that is my folly, but I don't think so. Some of the worst ideas to pollute society and culture have come from the modern university. That doesn't mean that universities don't have something to offer, but when you teach folly as enlightenment and expect others to accept it we are on the road to ruin.
I'd like to go on all day, but I have training to do for the Special Olympics, women's swimming seems to be the thing these days and then I have attend a lecture on the Irish Diaspora and the reparations I'm due from the 13th century, compounded with interest and probably paid in Biden bucks, which means a cargo plane will be dumping the reparations on my lawn. I hope I get enough for a cup of coffee. ☕ Happy Monday Friends!
Some Black Hills for your morning shot of beauty.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
Padre - Tom Miller invites you to a Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.
https://teams.live.com/meet/93792382189049?p=DiBHsYfuECPgDrG7vO
2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
6:00 AM - 8:00 AM (CST)
Occurs every day starting 1/1 until 12/31/2027
Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
White Pilled Wednesday - A break from the heaviness of news and current events to focus upon things more personal & positive for the first hour of Coffee Talk.
Afternoon Chats - Most Tuesday, Friday & Sundays 2:00 PM Central
Other chats as posted in the community.
Quite apart from the fact that I utterly admire, even love, her, this is the best possible response to an idiot, who, in his defense, asked a pretty good question.
https://x.com/TBifford/status/2087992591279407133/video/1?s=61
The Beautiful
Said the Disciple to the Lover, “Sir, before I left the world I heard certain men who were held in high esteem and thought to know the will of the Beloved say that those who loved the Beautiful did not love the Beloved but loved idols, yet in the Garden of the Beloved we are ever striving to create beauty for the pleasure of the Beloved. Were they then speaking the truth?”
The Lover answered, “Those who said this had never glimpsed the form of the Beloved nor ever truly sought Him, for all beauty is but the reflection of the beauty of the Beloved, although seen very dimly as in a dark and faulty mirror, even as all goodness is a dim reflection of the goodness of the Beloved. So it is that those who love beauty and goodness recognize dimly in them the form of the Beloved and though often in ignorance those who are seeking the Beautiful and the Good are seeking after the Beloved.”
