In my latest National Post column I say French President Emmanuel Macron's expressed wish to govern like Jupiter would have doomed him in the English-speaking world... and should have in France or anywhere else too.

"When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you."

Irving Layton, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe & Mail August 8, 2001

"Odd, I thought to myself, how in all walks of life there are lives graced by dreams, and lives steeped in dullness. And when greatness strikes, the dreamer is prepared; grace softens the shock. But to the dull, greatness can be traumatic."

Frank Capra The Name Above the Title

"I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven’s sake. What’s the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge?"

The heroine in J.D. Salinger Franny and Zooey, quoted by Edward Tingley in First Things January 2002

"One science only will one genius fit/ So vast is art, so narrow human wit."

Alexander Pope, quoted in Marshall McLuhan The Gutenberg Galaxy 

"'Do you believe in God, Winston?' ‘No.’ ‘Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?’ ‘I don’t know. The spirit of Man.’ ‘And do you consider yourself a man?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors.'"

O'Brien and Winston Smith in George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four

 "He has planted his last potato. Han har satt sin sista potatis."

“Idioms from Sweden” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2005)