“there is no real shame in retreating from an impossible situation or in fleeing from an enemy that seems too powerful to attack.”

Malcolm Cowley, Exile’s Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s.

In my latest National Post column I say the possibly entry of John Baird into the Tory leadership race as a self-proclaimed “true blue” candidate who’s also modern raises the question of what exactly he thinks he believes… if anything. OK. Never mind exactly. Can we at least get a vague notion?

“You can’t bet the farm on it or you’ll buy the farm.”

Commentator on Blue Jays’ game on CBC Oct. 2, 1992  [specifically re a pitcher going low and away or high and tight]

“It made a man feel what he should feel, that he was still in the childhood of the world.”

G.K. Chesterton, The Club of Queer Trades

In my latest Epoch Times column I say the spat in France over whether to stick a monstrous modern spire on a restored Notre Dame cathedral reflects a civilization that, cut off from tradition, has lost the ability to believe in anything.