21 May 2024

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Weight of Glory

 

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations.  There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 1941

"The world would be better off if people tried to become better, and people would be better if they stopped trying to become better off.  For when everyone tries to become better off, nobody is better off. But when everyone tries to become better everyone is better off."

Peter Maurin, Better and Better Off

"What we would like to do is change the world— make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And to a certain extent, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the destitute— the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor in other words, we can to a certain extent change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world."

Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, June 1946

"At bottom, what should you do to avoid being an idiot or a swine?  Merely this: you should do something great, you should become resigned to the fact that you will seem ridiculous to a race of janitors and bureaucrats if you are to enter the service of Splendor.  Then you will know what it means to be the friend of God. The Friend of God!   I am on the verge of tears when I think of it."

Léon Bloy, The Secret of Léon Bloy by Jacques Maritain, 1912

"In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God.  Thereafter, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all.  Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 1937

The equity markets are on a pause, waiting for some news, or earnings from Nvidia. 

Gold and silver were off a bit.

The Dollar was flat.

VIX continued to wallow down into a dull complacency.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Have a pleasant evening.