“We are as Hector on the walls of Troy with Andromache and always have been. Only the Crystal Palace and all those nineteenth-century trust funds ever assured us otherwise.”

An author whose name I did not record in Chronicles magazine October 1991

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."

John Stuart Mill, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe & Mail February 15, 2002

“as you know very well, the only conceivable way to play a game is to treat it extremely seriously.”

A character in E.F. Benson “In The Tube” in Roald Dahl, ed. Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories

In my latest Convivium article I say the people playing at holding a Black Mass in Ottawa weren’t serious… which is.

“I remember when Jack Smith, putting together a story on me, read me a quote from Jack London: ‘I would rather be a meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.’ ‘What does that mean to you?’ Jack Smith asked. I thought for a long moment, and then I said, ‘Throw deep.’”

Kenny Stabler Snake

“What a miserable thing life is: you’re living in clover, only the clover isn’t good enough.”

Bertold Brecht, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go

“Liquid sunshine”

What his mother always called pouring rain, according to Bill Clinton while presiding over the dedication of his presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas in a downpour, quoted in Maclean’s November 29, 2004

“We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.”

Albert Einstein, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go