“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach us.”

Aldous Huxley quoted in Andrew Roberts “Introduction” in Andrew Roberts, ed., What Might Have Been (as from a letter written in 1959) and also by managing editor Geoffrey Stevens in Maclean’s April 19, 1999

“But when your sword breaks, you draw your dagger.”

Nikabrik [re using bad magic, however] in C.S. Lewis Prince Caspian

In my latest Loonie Politics column I suggest that China ceasing to be most populous nation on Earth is a more significant blow to the Politburo’s conviction that as the “Central Country” they naturally rule the world than many people realize.

“No man with any sense assumes that a woman’s words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.”

Archie Goodwin’s internal monologue in Rex Stout The Mother Hunt

“Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes.”

Joan Didion Slouching Toward Bethlehem

“But to give an accurate and exhaustive account of that phenomenon would require, as Beerbohm might have said, a far less brilliant pen than mine.”

Andrew Gimson in National Post May 10, 2003 [his topic happened to be contemporary anti-Americanism in Germany but my point is the insult not its target]

“I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in.”

C.S. Lewis “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State: Is Progress Possible?” first published in The Observer July 20, 1958

Re the 2nd-rate composers who get exposure on “In the Shadow on Tom Allen’s excellent CBC Radio program, Music and Company… One must learn to recognize the signposts of mediocrity in life which, as a friend intoned recently, is too short to drink bad wine…. Probably 90 per cent of the renovations in our major cities would qualify for a visual version of In the Shadow – cautionary tales of mediocrity rampant on a field of good intentions.”

William Thorsell in Globe & Mail June 2, 2003 [ironically the same William Thorsell who oversaw a dreadful renovation of the Royal Ontario Museum].