“What in our history makes you think I’m capable of something like that?”
Roy O’Bannon (Owen Wilson) to Chon Wang (Jackie Chan) in Shanghai Knights according to www.imdb.com
“Soon we shall know everything the 18th century didn’t know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us.”
Randall Jarrell, quoted on flyleaf of Neil Postman Building a Bridge to the 18th Century
“It’s funny, he thought. I’m always sure things are going to turn out badly, and, damn it, they usually do.”
Tom Rath's internal monologue in Sloan Wilson The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit
“That’s getting the worst of both ends of the stick.”
Announcer on Monday Night Football Oct. 12, 1992 (re a guy getting called for a personal foul his teammate actually committed)
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say Trudeau’s downmarket trip to an upmarket doughnut shop in Winnipeg was PR gone badly wrong.
"Extreme pessimism is a luxury that only the very young can afford. As you become older, pessimism becomes much more spiritually expensive, and you don’t indulge in it unless you are really convinced of what you’re saying. When you’re a 25-year-old, it looks good to say that life is just a can of worms. When you’re 55, it’s not as funny. You’ve seen a few worms by that time."
Robertson Davies, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail Oct. 12, 2005
“The fact that… we still live well cannot ease the pain of feeling that we no longer live nobly.”
John Updike, quoted by ordained minister Kevin Little in an Op Ed in the Ottawa Citizen June 13, 2002
“You’ve got to be strong, and that’s not one of his strengths.”
An announcer on an NHL game in the late 1980s regarding (I believe) Tim Tookey attempting to cover Edmonton Oiler Steve Smith.