“Many people today spend their lives in the really delightful pursuit of kickable objects.”
G.K. Chesterton in Acton Gazette December 2, 1910, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)
“Honesty is never solemn; it is only hypocrisy that can be that. Honesty always laughs, because things are so laughable.”
G.K. Chesterton “A Plea for Hasty Journalism” in The Apostle and the Wild Ducks, quoted in “Can’t You Take A Joke?” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)
“It helps a lot, with two people as much together as he and I were, if they understand each other. He understood that I was too strong-minded to add another word unless he told me to, and I understood that he was too pigheaded to tell me to.”
Archie Goodwin’s internal monologue himself and Nero Wolfe in Rex Stout The Final Deduction
“The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.”
British jurist Sir George Jessel, quoted by Katherine Gay in I think the Financial Post from early 1994 (given me by a colleague without precise attribution)
“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
Oscar Wilde, in Lady Windemere’s Fan
“my husband… recently took up the gentle art of bee-keeping. After a disastrous start… he triumphed with a ninth-place finish in the fiercely fought honey competition at the Royal Winter Fair. He and his fellow drones… beat out literally tens of entries from all over the province…”
Margaret Wente in Globe & Mail December 24, 2004
“The first five florists I called from the phone book knew nothing about carpet or tile. And suddenly I’m the idiot!”
Emailed by a friend without attribution April 12, 2024
“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].