"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must."
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) [the guy who also said "the pen is mightier than the sword" and started a novel "It was a dark and stormy night"]
"With God dead, there remains only history and power."
“Helen’s Exile” in Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus & Other Essays
"The truth is that I care more for my dog, donkey, and garden in the little English village where we live than for all the publicity in the world."
Frances Chesterton (GKC's wife), "to an American reporter during one of G.K.’s lecture tours”, quoted by Therese Warmus in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2005)
“It was this century [the last before Christ] that produced most of the famous Romans whose names are familiar to us: the two Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Cicero, Caesar, and finally Augustus, all of whom helped in various ways to save Italy and the Empire from premature dissolution. It was, in fact, an age of great personalities, and one, too, in which personal character became as deeply interesting to the men of the time as it is even now to us.”
W. Warde Fowler, Rome.
In the latest issue of The Landowner I ridicule Britain’s Royal Academy for putting on a show of what Renaissance artists should have painted if they’d been smart, nice and sophisticated like us.
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