Laudator Temporis Acti

Xenophon, Apology of Socrates 6 (tr. O.J. Todd):

But now, if my years are prolonged, I know that the frailties of old age will inevitably be realized, that my vision must be less perfect and my hearing less keen, that I shall be slower to learn and more forgetful of what I have learned.

νῦν δὲ εἰ ἔτι προβήσεται ἡ ἡλικία, οἶδ ̓ ὅτι ἀνάγκη ἔσται τὰ τοῦ γήρως ἀποτελεῖσθαι καὶ ὁρᾶν τε χεῖρον καὶ ἀκούειν ἧττον καὶ δυσμαθέστερον εἶναι καὶ ὧν ἔμαθον ἐπιλησμονέστερον.

[J.] Enoch Powell (1912-1998), No Easy Answers (London: Sheldon Press, 1973), p. 123:

Day by day we are surrounded by the din, and often by the violence, of those who propose to make men better and happier, and who are sure they know how to do it, if only others would have the sense to give them the necessary powers.

C.S. Lewis, letter to his brother Warren (Jan. 28, 1940):

This week I have been reading an Elizabethan, Hall's Satires (as dull as ditchwater) and Cicero's De Legibus. The latter you might suppose to be rather a bromide, but it is perfectly delightful. It's in dialogue form, held out of doors. Isn't this nice?—'Now we have reached the island. I don't know a more charming spot. Look how the stream divides as if round the bow of a ship.' And again 'But I've another reason for liking this place which can't affect you in the same way. My brother and I are "on our native heath" here. We come of an old family hereabouts: all round here you find our sacred places, our own people, and all the relics of our forebears. You see the house as it now is, rebuilt by the care of my father, who was an invalid and spent pretty well all his life here among his books. But in this very spot, in my grandfather's time, there was a little house in the old style—like the one Curius has down in the Sabine country—and in it I was born.'

All very ordinary and obvious, of course, but, like Boswell, so full of sense and leisure and happiness. Does it occur to you that people have written of that sort of thing in almost all ages but our own? I begin to suspect that the world is divided not only into the happy and the unhappy, but into those who like happiness and those who, odd as it may seem, really don't.

Related post: Cicero's Birthplace.

Sarah Raza, " Millions of Americans may now also be considered Canadian under a new law," AP (April 23, 2026):

Previously, Canadian citizenship by descent could only be passed down to one generation, from a parent to a child. But the new law opened up citizenship to anyone born before that date who could prove they have a direct Canadian ancestor — a grandparent, great-grandparent or even more distant ancestor.

According to DNA analysis, my ancestry is 48% French Canadian. My nearest relative born in Canada is my maternal grandmother, Yvonne Aurore Hélie (1900-1999), a native of Quebec. Quebec didn't issue birth certificates until recently, but the church register of L'église de la Visitation-de-la-Sainte-Vierge, in Pointe-du-Lac, contains the record of my grandmother's baptism (thanks to a Canadian friend for deciphering the handwriting; click once or twice to enlarge, entry B-37 at lower right corner, on second page):

Le vingt sept août mil neuf
cent. nous, prêtre, curé, soussigné
avons baptisé Marie Aurore
Yvonne, née le même jour de
baptisme. mariage de Alphonse
Helie et de Marie Louise Benoit
de cette paroisse. Parrain
Emile Dupont. Marraine
Aurore Benoit qui ont signé
avec nous. Le père a déclaré
ne savoir signer.

    Aurore Benoit
    Emile Dupont
        J. Caron, Ptr curé

Ptr = presbyter or prêtre. For the identity of the priest who performed the baptism see Jean-Baptiste-Arthur Allaire, Dictionnaire biographique du clergé canadien-français: Les contemporains (St Hyacinthe: Imprimerie de "La Tribune", 1908), p. 104:

CARON (L'abbé Joseph), né à Louiseville, comté de Maskinongé, le 25 avril 1855, de Thomas Caron, cultivateur, et d'Émélie Lesieur-Désaulniers, fit ses études à Saint-Hyacinthe; fut ordonné dans sa paroisse natale par Mgr Laflèche, le 29 août 1880. Professeur, directeur des élèves, des séminaristes, et aumônier des Sœurs Sainte-Marthe au séminaire de Saint Hyacinthe (1880-1891); curé de Régina dans la Saskatchewan (1891-1894); exécuta le tour du monde en 1894; aumônier de l'hôpital des Trois-Rivières (1894-1898); depuis 1898, curé de la Pointe-du-Lac, où il a parachevé le presbytère en 1898 et l'église en 1900. Maître-ès-arts de l'université de Québec (1891).

Photograph of L'église de la Visitation-de-la-Sainte-Vierge in Pointe-du-Lac: My grandmother also appears in the 1901 census of Canada, under the name Ivonne Helie (click once or twice to enlarge, row number 3): Row number 1 is my grandmother's sister Alice (1898-2002), whom I also remember fondly.

According to my grandmother's obituary in the Portland Press Herald (April 24, 1999), p. 19, she was born in Yamachiche. See the following map for the proximity of Yamachiche to Pointe-du-Lac:

[J.] Enoch Powell (1912-1998), No Easy Answers (London: Sheldon Press, 1973), p. 116:

From pulpits throughout the land they [the Christian laity] hear homilies on trade unions and industrial relations, on housing, on economics and productivity, on politics and trade—all of them subjects in which the clergy as such have no special competence and about which in consequence many of those whom they address understand a great deal more than they do. 'Why?' ask the laity. 'Surely it is to avoid having to talk to us about that which is the sole reason and justification for their calling: the doctrine and sacraments of the Church. It is their escapism.' This more and more fervent desire of the clergy to be heard talking about, and concerning themselves in, the business of the hour—and incidentally, in doing so, to be seen wearing the fashionable clothing of the hour—is the symptom of a flight from their own business.

Id., p. 118:

More and more the Church—and not, so far as I see, only in England—has tried to be heard by saying and doing anything and everything but what it alone can say and do. Not surprisingly, it is heard less and less. Is it too late for it to be itself again?

Related post: Politics and the Pulpit.

Plato, Laws 10.888a-b (tr. Trevor J. Saunders):

Now then, my lad, you're still young, and as time goes on you'll come to adopt opinions diametrically opposed to those you hold now.

ὦ παῖ, νέος εἶ, προϊὼν δέ σε ὁ χρόνος ποιήσει πολλὰ ὧν νῦν δοξάζεις μεταβαλόντα ἐπὶ τἀναντία τίθεσθαι.

Lucan, Pharsalia 3.55-56 (tr. J.D. Duff):

He knew that the causes of hatred and mainsprings of popularity are determined by the price of food.

gnarus et irarum causas et summa favoris
annona momenta trahi.

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), "The Universal Exhibition of 1855: the Fine Arts," Selected Writings on Art and Literature, tr. P.E. Charvet (1972; rpt. London: Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 115-139 (at 118):

Everyone can easily understand that, if the men whose function it is to express beauty were to conform to the rules laid down by the self-appointed pedagogues, beauty itself would disappear from the earth, since all types, all ideas, all sensations would merge into one vast monotonous and impersonal unity, as limitless as boredom and nothingness. Variety, that indispensable condition of life, would be expunged from life. So true is it that in the manifold productions of art, there is something always new, something that will eternally escape from the rules and the analyses of the school! Surprise, which is one of the greatest sources of enjoyment produced by art and literature, derives from this very variety of forms and sensations. The self-appointed pedant, a species of tyrant-mandarin, always reminds me of an impious wretch setting himself up as God.

Tout le monde conçoit sans peine que, si les hommes chargés d'exprimer le beau se conformaient aux règles des professeurs-jurés, le beau lui-même disparaîtrait de la terre, puisque tous les types, toutes les idées, toutes les sensations se confondraient dans une vaste unité, monotone et impersonnelle, immense comme l'ennui et le néant. La variété, condition sine quâ non de la vie, serait effacée de la vie. Tant il est vrai qu'il y a dans les productions multiples de l'art quelque chose de toujours nouveau qui échappera éternellement à la règle et aux analyses de l'école! L'étonnement, qui est une des grandes jouissances causées par l'art et la littérature, tient à cette variété même des types et des sensations. — Le professeur-juré, espèce de tyran-mandarin, me fait toujours l'effet d'un impie qui se substitue à Dieu.

C.S. Lewis, letter to his brother Warren (Dec. 18, 1939):

During the evening Ridley read to us a Swinburne ballad and, immediately after it, that ballad of Kipling’s which ends up 'You’ve finished with the flesh, my Lord'.

Nobody except me knew who the second one was by, and everyone agreed that it just killed the Swinburne as a real thing kills a sham. I then made him read 'Iron, cold iron' with the same result and later he drifted into McAndrew's Hymn. Surely Kipling must come back? When people have had time to forget 'If' and the inferior Barrack Room Ballads, all this other stuff must come into its own. I know hardly any poet who can deliver such a hammer stroke. The stories, of course, are another matter and are, I suppose, even now admitted to be good by all except a handful of Left idiots.