In my latest National Post column I say the Ottawa tornado is a worrying reminder of how fragile our modern high-tech just-in-time way of life really is.
"'Pah!' snarled Nikabrik. 'You badgers would have us wait till the sky falls and we can all catch larks.'"
C.S. Lewis Prince Caspian
"Unpleasantries exchanged"
TSN announcer regarding a little shoving match (no fight resulted) in Toronto Maple Leafs - Minnesota North Stars game November 1, 1993
“The question which moral system was the best depends principally on the question whether the heathen philosophers or the Christian preachers were right in their estimate of the facts. To suppose that Christian morals can ever survive the downfall of the great Christian doctrine is as absurd as to suppose that a yearly tenant will feel towards his property like a tenant in fee simple.”
James Fitzjames Stephen, “Note on Utilitarianism” postscript to Stephen's book Liberty Equality Fraternity
“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