In my latest National Post column I lampoon self-centred objections to the Pope calling preferring pets to children selfish.
“he looked upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us; that we …had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions…”
The narrator’s account of his Houyhnhnm master’s judgement on humans, in Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels
“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”
Stephen King, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail March 28, 2007
“Now I wish to say I will never call any doll a liar, being at all times a gentleman, and for all I know, Bobby Baker may really think The Brain is handsome and romantic, but personally I figure if she is not lying to him she is at least a little excited when she makes such a statement to The Brain.”
Damon Runyon “The Brain Goes Home” in The Best of Damon Runyon
In my latest Loonie Politics column I suggest the reason Canadians have been docile in the face of harsh and often arbitrary pandemic measures is that we are becoming a nation of sheep who bleat “I am a rebel” in unison because the government told us to.
In my latest National Post column I say the cycle of COVID lockdowns is like a bad remake of Groundhog Day, where no lessons get learned
“It is my conceit to expose myself to reproach only from others, never from myself.”
Nero Wolfe to the client in Rex Stout The Mother Hunt
“Make it happen. Greatness is not in where we stand but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But sail we must and not drift. Nor lie at anchor.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, a quotation that hockey player Sidney Crosby kept on his dresser according to Reader’s Digest Canadian Edition October 2005