“a noodle shop between two skyscrapers.”
The self-deprecating self-assessment of incoming Japanese Prime Minister Keizō Obuchi, quoted in Ottawa Citizen July 25, 1998 [and he duly died after less than two undistinguished years in office... but it’s not obvious that his predecessor or successor were skyscrapers either].
“If the dogmas are true, what can you do but try to get men to agree with them?”
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News Feb. 13, 1906, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023)
“Go back to the idea of government by ideas.”
G.K. Chesterton in “The Revolt Against Ideas,” in The Thing, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #6 (4-5/07)
“It’s hard to imagine how the human race could have survived if women had been as antisocial and unfriendly and unpleasant as men can be, and as the most creative men often are.”
Anthony Esolen in No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men, quoted in a review by Chuck Chalberg in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022)
“With your usual rapid grasp of the inessentials, you regard the mushrooms as the most important element of Mr. Hillerman’s plan.”
A character in Jack Hitt, ed., The Perfect Murder
He had many dinners alone with General George Marshall during the war, after “two stiff, bourbon old-fashioneds which the Chief liked to mix himself. There would be talk of course, but absolutely no war talk. That day he probably had had to make decisions that affected the fate of nations; tomorrow he would face problems equally crucial. But that evening he would be calm and unworried as he listened to my chatting. Once, I asked him how he stood up under the strain; he answered: ‘I’ve had to train myself never to worry about a decision once it’s made. You worry before you make it, but not after. You make the best judgement you can about a problem – then forget it. If you don’t, your mind is not fit to make the next decision.’”
Frank Capra The Name Above the Title
“He [Harvard chaplain Peter J. Gomes] is surely right that extermination, conversion, and demoralizing relativism are not the only options. The best of options is a particular tradition with truth claims that exclude contradictory truth claims and include the truth claim that the dignity of the human person means that all human beings, no matter how erroneous their beliefs, are to be engaged with love and respect.”
Richard John Neuhaus in First Things December 2006 (#168)
“As the ostrich observed, Where is everybody?”
Anthony Boucher, The Case of the Seven Sneezes (1942), quoted in “Top Ten Detective Fiction Wise Cracks” compiled by “Gramps", in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 2 #6 Issue 15 (April-May 1999)