“She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say ‘when.’”
P.G. Wodehouse quoted by Joseph Bottum in First Things October 2005 # 156
“Since life passes, whether sweet or bitter,/ Since the soul must pass the lips. Whether in Nishpur or in Balkh,/ Drink wine, for after you and I are gone many a moon/ Will pass from old to new, from new to old.”
Omar Khayyam, cited in Sadegh Hedayat’s deeply disturbed novel The Blind Owl
In my latest Epoch Times column I argue that trust is decaying fast in our society, because trustworthiness is succumbing to self-actualization, with dangerous consequences from politics to concerts.
“Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.”
Tom Lehrer, quoted as standalone “WORDS OF WISDOM” in Epoch Times email teaser February 26, 2023
“It does not very much matter what we think of one individual lady known as Miss Marie Corelli.”
G.K. Chesterton “Why Books Become Popular” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (9-10/22) [as an editor’s note explained, this contemporary of GKC’s was the best-selling author of her day, outselling Kipling, Wells, and Conan Doyle combined... but has anyone heard of her today? I certainly hadn’t.]
“The French expression qui s’excuse s’accuse...”
John O’Sullivan in National Review May 1, 1995
“The symphony in B quiet”
One of mine, from May 1, 2002, regarding aggressively modernist music.
“always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?”
Gabriel Syme in G.K. Chesterton The Man Who Was Thursday