Stout Wisdom

Welcome to one of the best sources of wisdom on the web! We invite you to browse through our library of Stout Wisdom. Some are salty. Some sweet. Elegant or earthy. Poetic. Majestic. We don’t do crude or cruel. But, all are stout.

John Mauldin

…when software becomes part of society, all of society’s problems get expressed in software. We connected everyone, so we connected the bad people, and more important, we connected all of our own worst instincts.

Fanny Crosby

It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow, I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me.

Willa Cather

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

L. P. Hartley

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Gale Boyd

In the world of relentless attack, there are no turns. There is no respect for the other. The other is branded unworthy, a demon. The only answer is to destroy, even if the destruction of one means the destruction of many and the obliteration of sanity and hope.

Paul Kingsnorth

Ideas will become idols in the blink of an eye. I have to pick up my cross and start walking.

Wendell Berry

It is not allowable to love the Creation according to the purposes one has for it, any more than it is allowable to love one’s neighbor in order to borrow his tools.

Kyle Smith

Genius may not be the spouse of neuroticism, but they certainly seem to go on a lot of dates together.

Jonah Goldberg

…conservatism is inherently skeptical of new ideas, not because it is opposed to new ideas, but because as a simple matter of math, most new ideas are bad ideas. Every child is a new idea-spewing machine, and most of those ideas are going to be garbage. As a small child, I thought I could take a piece of heating coal I found on the street, put it on the stove, and then press down really hard on it with a fork to turn it into a diamond. That would’ve been a great idea if it worked. But most new ideas don’t work, so they aren’t great, as the man who thought he could win the Iditarod with a team of cats and basset hounds quickly learned.

Jonah Goldberg

“Measure twice, cut once” is the boring, grown-up way to do carpentry. The exciting way to do carpentry is to get drunk on peach schnapps and high on airplane glue, cover yourself in baby oil—especially your hands so they’re super slippery—and then let the chainsaw guide you.

Peggy Noonan

…maybe the 25th Amendment figuratively kicked in, informally, almost spontaneously, quietly. I am guessing a network of souls are quietly doing their jobs, establishing protocols of safety, wordlessly nodding as they keep their hand on the tiller. They’ve taken the keys from the drunk, so quietly he doesn’t even know. I’m imagining a mix of people—deputy secretaries and assistants to assistants and generals and some elected officials….This week the Supreme Court blandly refused to fast-track his latest election appeal. They did it quietly, without comment.

Dan Jenkins

Laughter is the only thing that’ll cut trouble down to a size where you can talk to it.

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