Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Friday ADD Irregulars, WSN Contributors, Friends & Refugees, PHAM & Misfits, Conversants, Lurkers and Lost.
Some Friday quotes on truth for the weekend ahead of you. Beyond some of the reveal truths I have accepted as a person of faith, cultural, political and other "truths" are often elusive and far too often obscured in our modern conversations regarding topics and their factuality or falsity. I look for signposts along the path that point me in the direction of more grounded truths, or at least ways to interpret things so that it corresponds with experience and reality. I suppose it is the dance between experience and reality where the devil of interpretation and meaning wrestle about the whatness of it all.
To limit yourself to your own understanding is to narrow the horizon of your learning and become more content with answers than with questions. The cautionary note is not be a person of nothing but questions or a person put to sleep by believing they possess all the answers. Some mixture of a few answers and many questions, someplace to rest from the culture war but never to be isolated from it seems to be worth the effort. I constantly hope to find the humility to admit ignorance, to confess (I'm biased in my appreciation for that concept) when I am wrong but also to be fearless when I know I am right. Well enough of that prattling - off to some quotes. Happy Friday Neighbors!! Five for Friday!!
Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first stage it is ridiculed, in the second stage it is opposed, in the third stage it is regarded as self-evident. -Arthur Schopenhauer
It is by doubting that we come to investigate and by investigating that we recognize the truth. -Peter Abelard, Yes and No
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. -Rene Descartes, Principles of Philosophy
An error is none the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected. -John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Right is right, even if everybody is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it. -William Penn
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.
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2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
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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.”
