“we might say, like the Frenchman asked if he had lunched on the boat, ‘au contraire.’”
G.K. Chesterton, “Reflections on Thursday” (looking back at writing The Man Who Was Thursday) reprinted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #8 (July-August, 2007)
“There is no need to fasten a bell to a fool.”
“Danish proverb” according to www.hound-dog-media.com
“After the gleam of exaggerated hopes, what Kipling called the Gods of the Copybook Headings have come back to croak out their ancient saws, whose only merit is that they happen to be true.”
The Economist December 22, 1990
“The wise, I say, may take advice from fools.”
Pandar to Troilus in Geoffrey Chaucer Troilus and Criseyde
“the way that Bear Bryant looked upon football players - ‘Be good or be gone.’”
An author whose name I did not record in National Review April 12, 1993
“Chicago’s going to want to pour on all the throttles here.”
Play-by-play announcer on ESPN February 1987
“Romance lurks in unexpected places. We walk abroad amidst scenes made dull by familiarity, and let our thoughts ramble far away beyond the commonplace… and behold! all the time Romance is at our very doors.”
The narrator in R. Austin Freeman, “The Dead Hand,” in Douglas G. Greene, ed., Detection by Gaslight: 14 Victorian Detective Stories (the reference is to adventure and wonder not love specifically).
In my latest Convivium article I say the people playing at holding a Black Mass in Ottawa weren’t serious… which is.