“[T]he absorption of the man and the exclusion of other matters show not how dull the subject is, but how fascinating it is. Because a man refuses to come out of Eden, they assume that he is being detained in gaol.”
G.K. Chesterton on absorption in apparently trivial hobbies, in “A Defence of Bores,” in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton
“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.”
Confucius, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go
“Presumably an Appalachian pin-up would be a moonshine girl.”
One of mine from January 5, 2000 – I don’t know if certain newspapers still have “Sunshine girls” but they did then.
In my latest National Post column I contrast various Ontario school boards’ grudging admission that some misguided students might celebrate the Queen with their mandatory embrace of every progressive occasion or pseudo-occasion.
“Look, I love [his] work. But have you seen the man trying to communicate without a script? He’s about as articulate as a bag of potato chips. Warren Beatty couldn’t win a debate with a mime.”
Richard Roper in the Chicago Sun-Times regarding a potential Beatty presidential run quoted in Globe & Mail September 7, 1999
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say Pierre Poilievre’s overwhelming victory in the Conservative leadership contest, and Jean Charest’s hollow showing, demonstrates yet again that snobbery is no antidote to populism.
“He offers a remarkable tribute to the almost forgotten truth that man is never genuinely at home except in goodness, that artistic emotions can no more refresh the nature than a liqueur can quench the thirst.’”
G.K. Chesterton (on Aleister Crowley, whose doctrines he loathed and the one person he refused to debate, but with regard to his book The Soul of Osiris), quoted by Chris Chan in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #2 (Nov.-Dec. 2021)
“He who limps still walks.”
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, “Polish aphorist, poet, and satirist 1909-1966” [according to the Ottawa Citizen library] quoted on www.memorablequotations.com/lec.htm in 2003