"'Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die!'"
Hester Prynne in Nathanial Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter, quoted in William J. Bennett The Book of Virtues
"people for whom 'history' is whatever happened two weeks ago, the same people who will be likely to assure us in their next breath that Britney Spears, or some other confection du jour, is the greatest pop singer 'of all time.' Imagine that. All time. That term might even span as much as a whole decade."
Wilfred M. McClay in First Things February 2002
In my latest National Post column I call the availability of a genuine Stalin statue on e-Bay a reminder of a strange double standard about evil on the left.
"The main impulse of a true genius is not to look into himself, with endless digging into his conscience and subconscious - as Pasternak said, ‘conscience is like the headlights of a car; their light directed outward illuminates the way, directed inward leads to catastrophe’ - but to look out of himself. And to give. And if the main impulse of your existence is the desire to give, you cannot really be a nasty character. That’s what, probably, Pushkin had in mind when he exclaimed in his Mozart and Salieri: 'Genius and villainy are incompatible.'"
Chronicles magazine 1/88 [again I had regrettably not yet in 1988 acquired the habit of recording the author as well as publication when I recorded points I considered noteworthy]
"The one thing we know about life is that we never get out alive, so why not live like a proud man?"
Owen Chantry in Louis L’Amour Over on the Dry Side
In my latest National Post column I say the Prime Minister isn't being inconsistent or confused about allegedly groping a reporter 18 years ago; he's consistently denying the existence of truth.
"Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle."
Woody Allen, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail Feb. 15, 2011 [I realize Allen has been revealed as a pretty unsavoury character... but it's still a good line even if it could fairly be applied to him]