“Harry Emerson Fosdick says in his book, The Power to See it Through, ‘There is a Scandinavian saying which some of us might well take as a rallying cry for our lives: “The north wind made the Vikings.” Wherever did we get the idea that secure and pleasant living, the absence of difficulty, and the comfort of ease, ever of themselves made people either good or happy? Upon the contrary, people who pity themselves go on pitying themselves even when they are laid softly on a cushion, but always in history character and happiness have come to people in all sorts of circumstances, good, bad, and different, when they shouldered their personal responsibility. So, repeatedly the north wind has made the Vikings.’”

Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

“What comes first in intention comes last in execution.”

St. Thomas Aquinas, quoted by Pierre Trudeau in Thomas Axworthy and Pierre Trudeau, eds., Towards a Just Society

“This life in us... however low it flickers or fiercely burns, is still a divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives never so humane and enlightened. To suppose otherwise is to countenance a death-wish. Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.”

Malcolm Muggeridge Something Beautiful for God

“His workers liked to say that he always arrived at meetings in a freshly rumpled suit.”

Luke Sharpe in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 #7 (re Leo Burnet, a great adman responsible for all sorts of icons including Tony the Tiger, the Jolly Green Giant, and the Pillsbury Doughboy)

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say we can’t tell whether Quebec is “a nation” until we decide what that term means… and while we’re at it maybe we should try to figure out whether Canada still fits the definition.

“fairy tales founded in me two convictions; first, that this world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite different, but which is quite delightful; second, that before this wildness and delight one may well be modest and submit to the queerest limitations of so queer a kindness. But I found the whole modern world running like a high tide against both my tendernesses; and the shock of that collision created two sudden and spontaneous sentiments, which... have since hardened into convictions. First, I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism; saying that everything is as it must always have been, being unfolded without fault from the beginning. The leaf on the tree is green because it could never have been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because it might have been scarlet…. But the great determinists of the nineteenth century were strongly against this native feeling … In fact, according to them, nothing ever really had happened since the beginning of the world. Nothing ever had happened since existence had happened; and even about the date of that they were not very sure. The modern world as I found it was solid for modern Calvinism, for the necessity of things being as they are. But when I came to ask them I found they had really no proof of this unavoidable repetition in things except the fact that the things were repeated. Now, the mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird than more rational…. one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.”

G.K. Chesterton Orthodoxy

In my latest National Post column I ask whether we couldn’t keep just one platform for the cutesy puppy pix and confine the rage and messaging to the entire rest of the Internet.

“The man who is master of his passions is Reason’s slave.”

Cyril Connolly, quoted in Globe & Mail July 28, 1999