“the atmosphere of alarm, of being scotched, of being up a tree of incredible height...”
Arnold Bennett in "Lo! ‘Twas a Gala Night!" in Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
“Without memory we are a society suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s, tackling each day like a baby with its finger stuck out before the flames…. our self-imposed Alzheimer’s.”
John Ralston Saul in the inaugural LaFontaine-Baldwin Lecture, reprinted in Globe & Mail March 24, 2000
“we have lost a vision of man. We are not sure how different he actually is from animal or vegetable or rock or mineral. It is partly, I think, because we have ceased trying to relate ourselves to God: we no longer even cry that God is dead; instead, we have named him an hypothesis, a dream, and turned him over to the laboratory to ‘prove.’ And because we have stopped searching for God we have stopped searching for ultimate meaning, saying there is no purpose in human existence. Hence all is absurdity, all is nothing. The more honest among those who want God ‘proved’ tend to seek uneasy solace in neo-nihilism; or, putting heart above logic, in humanism - while the less honest settle for their own brand of idol worship, sacrificing all to success or skin color or capitalism or communism or their work or their pleasure, whispering, Let’s don’t think about it.”
Lillian Smith Killers of the Dream
"'I can’t do anything about the state of the world, but I can put my own life in order....’”
Tom Rath (the main character) in Sloan Wilson The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit
“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.”
Elliot Carver (the villain) in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies
In my latest National Post column I worry about Boris Johnson being threatened with a "diversity course" to make him like the burka.
'Every man must wear out at least one pair of fools’ shoes."
Charlie Chan, according to a biography of Chan's creator Earl Derr Biggers I found on an AOL group on October 26, 2006