“I call these men [the Framers of the Constitution] heroes in deliberate defiance of the ban placed upon this word by most serious-minded historians. By hero I mean a leader of men who engages with clear eye and stout heart in an uncertain enterprise for some purpose larger than the gratification of his own ambition or the rewarding of his own friends, and whose deeds work a benevolent influence on the lives of countless other men.”

Clinton Rossiter The Grand Convention (and it was written in 1966 so this morale-destroying ban has been in place for a long time).

“From fat your iniquity proceeds.”

The soul in Piers Plowman Passus XV l. 318

“But I remained incommunicado, if you please, in a hole of my own making. And what fun is there in hiding when no one’s looking for you?”

Frank Capra The Name Above the Title [about having withdrawn from the world of film, having lost his nerve].

“Industry makes work go well, but a man who puts off work is always at hand-grips with ruin.”

Hesiod, quoted in Maclean’s July 28, 2003

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

Mark Twain, quoted in Maclean’s July 28, 2003 (and in “Yet More Mark Twain Quotables” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #2 (Oct.-Nov. 2004)

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the Peel District School Board purging all books written before 2008 is a worrying red flag about what’s happening in government schools… and I do mean red.

“The clouds above us join and separate,/ The breeze in the courtyard leaves and returns./ Life is like that, so why not relax?/ Who can stop us from celebrating?”

The poet Lu Yu, cited in Benjamin Hoff The Tao of Pooh

“At forty he [the villain, Jack Bolt] was an embittered man who blamed the world for the success that had never come to him, failing to understand that the fault was his own. He was one of those who had always wanted to start at the top, and the idea of consistent effort to get there had seemed futile to him.”

Louis L’Amour The Riders of High Rock