"The narrowest hinge on my hand puts to scorn all machinery."
Walt Whitman, quoted in John Stewart Collis, Living With A Stranger: A Discourse on the Human Body
"Vestigial remains of that Victorianism are everywhere around us. And memories of them persist even when the realities are gone, rather like an amputated limb that still seems to throb when the weather is bad. The sense of values lost may be as palpable as the values we do have."
Gertrude Himmelfarb, The De-moralization of Society
"I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it."
Dame Edith Sitwell, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Social Studies in Globe and Mail Sept. 29, 2011
In my latest National Post column I complain that recent zombie movies don't make even a feeble effort to be scientifically plausible about what would happen if corpses somehow got reanimated.
In my latest National Post column I say the strong showing of the allegedly "far right" Alternative für Deutschland in the German election means you must either call one in eight German voters a neo-Nazi or concede that many normal people are deeply dissatisfied with politics as usual nowadays.
“I can assure you that no person would be better for the job.”
Ralph C. Maddocks (this from my "he's an extraordinary man" file of hidden insults - the original is Inspector Dreyfus re Clouseau in A Shot In The Dark)
In my latest National Post column I argue that the quantity of antidepressants we now take, with shockingly little understanding of their direct or indirect effects, is not cause for complacency about progress.
"But, when infection is about, an open mind is about as safe as an open sewer."
Nicholas Murray in The Sunday Times April 7, 2002 (specifically re Aldous Huxley succumbing to so many cranky notions before and after moving to California)