“Is Britney Spears the next Madonna? I surely hope not. One of either is a surplus.”

Rex Murphy in Globe & Mail Nov. 10, 2001

“We must have a holiday from habits, instead of merely a habit of taking holidays.”

G.K. Chesterton in London Magazine August 1924, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 16 #3 (Nov.-Dec. 2012)

In my latest National Post column I say John Le Carré’s novels were morally rotten and dangerous in practice.

“We need metaphors of magic and monsters in order to understand the human condition.”

Stephen Donaldson, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail May 25, 2007 [to which I add “Yes, but why?”]

“Leisure is a food, like sleep; liberty is a food, like sleep. Leisure is a matter of quality rather than quantity. Five minutes lasts longer when one cannot be disturbed than five hours when one maybe disturbed.”

G.K. Chesterton “On Holidays”, from New Witness May 21, 1914 in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #7 (June 2008)

In my latest National Post column I say the outrageous way the Chinese government speaks about the outrageous things it does is a red flag about the outrageous way it thinks.

“it is not probable that a man who is careless in small matters is careful in large ones; quite the contrary, a man who cannot even copy a sentence of Keynes’s correctly is not likely to be a reliable reporter of complicated or badly expressed ideas.”

George Stigler "On Scientific Writing” in The Intellectual and the Market Place and Other Essays [in support of a proposal that someone undertake a large-scale random verification of statements of empirical fact and of quotations from other writers in published economic articles]

“He shall die a flea’s death.”

William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor