“there is even a rather delightful publication for children called The Punctuation Repair Kit, which takes the line ‘Hey! It’s uncool to be stupid!’ – which is a lie, of course, but you have to admire them for trying.”
Lynn Truss Eats, Shoots & Leaves
“There are no stupid questions… but if there were…”
Another of mine, from Nov. 3 2014 [probably I was about to ask one that strove to qualify].
“bother-in-law”
Me at some unspecified time [and not about my own brother-in-law, a splendid chap, but I modestly consider it too funny to omit to spare his possible hurt feelings]
“Stupidity may have no defenders but it has lots of practitioners.”
Me February 29, 2004 [an alternative variant same day had “adherents” as the final word].
“In chapter 13 [of A Preface to Paradise Lost], C.S. Lewis… discussed the tendency, since the time of William Blake and Percy Shelley for critics to regard Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost. Lewis put this idea in its place through an examination of the self-delusion of Satan as one who regarded himself as the injured party, and by reference to Milton's theology. Lewis declared, ‘We know from his prose works that [Milton] believed everything detestable to be, in the long run, also ridiculous; and mere Christianity commits every Christian to believing that “the devil is (in the long run) an ass”.’ Lewis said that we see the same ridiculous trait of the ‘Sense of Injured Merit’ in a variety of familiar situations: the spoiled child, the film star, politicians, and minor poets.”
Harry Lee Poe The Making of C.S. Lewis
“To say [Garry] Geisel is appealing, of course, is to mean it only in the strictly legal sense.”
Linda Williamson in Ottawa Sun Oct. 4, 1999
“If you’re afraid of being spoiled by success, get a job in weather forecasting”
In a BC Transit publication called The Buzzer Jan. 14, 1994
“Ambrose Bierce wrote of an inventor who built a moon rocket. When he fired it up, it bored straight down into the earth. A while later he crawled up out of the hole, and triumphantly announced, ‘My invention has proved correct in all its details; the defects are merely basic and fundamental!’ … whereupon the investors rushed forward to press money on him for the next attempt.”
Spider Robinson in Globe & Mail April 27, 1999