“if Christianity were once abolished, how could the Freethinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning be able to find another subject, so calculated in all points, whereon to display their abilities? what wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose genius, by continual practice, has been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would therefore never be able to shine or distinguish themselves upon any other subject?”

Jonathan Swift “Argument Against Abolishing Christianity in England” in A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Works

“Thanks a lot, gentlemen, and don’t let the doorknob hit you in the butt.”

Tom Wolfe The Right Stuff (I don't claim he invented this wonderful expression but it's where I first encountered it)

“travel narrows the mind.”

This quotation has been widely attributed or claimed but as far as I can determine it originated with G.K. Chesterton in his book about his 1921 trip to America; it is that source that was quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 # 7 (June 2004)

In my latest National Post column, part of the paper’s “Serious Canada” series, I list the things a nation serious about its finances would do, and warn of the consequences if we don’t.

“I suppose the terrible thing about humiliation is the certainty that one is indeed a proper object of ridicule. While it is happening we can’t feel that it will pass, that it’s only a wretched moment.”

Denis Donoghue in his autobiography Warrenpoint (based on a conversation between Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot) quoted by Irving Howe in The New Republic March 11, 1991

“Watching [Nick] Faldo and [Curtis] Strange is like watching two glaciers at work.”

TV announcer re the Ryder Cup on Sunday July 24, 1995, 17th hole

“‘The idea that going to the beach was good for you was a creation of 18th-century Britain,’ writes Charles Leadbeater in Prospect magazine. ‘Entrepreneurs keen to promote an alternative to the spa hit upon the idea that immersing people in cold salty water might be healthy. One of the first recorded bathing expeditions took to the North Sea at Scarborough in 1627. A century later, a string of seaside alternatives to the spas at Bath and Buxton were well established. Before that, beaches had been regarded as hostile places, at best a working space for people who made their living from the sea: fishermen, smugglers, wreckers. Swimming for pleasure, and sunbathing, were unheard of.’”

“Social Studies” in Globe & Mail September 15, 2004