"I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble." Agatha Christie (quoted as Thought du jour in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail August 6, 2001)
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." Voltaire
"scrambling like a cat on a linoleum floor." MP Peter MacKay in 2002 (re a minister dealing badly with a crisis)
"The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the Dragon who is wasting fairyland." G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Kyro R. Lantsberger in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #1 (September 2005)
"The demand for 'relevance' in what is studied has its lazy, philistine and intolerant sides. But relevance has always been sought by readers if not (for good reason) by writers of history, for without a knowledge of his links to the past man is a social amnesiac, intellectually and therefore to some extent emotionally rootless." J.R. Hale Renaissance Europe 1480-1520
"Men do not become sinless by receiving a post in a bureaucracy." G.K. Chesterton in "Preface to Divorce vs. Democracy" quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 19 #8 (July-August 2016)
"Love is deeds, not fine words." "Spanish proverb" according to a writer in The New Republic September 3, 1990
“It is strange, he [Tom Rath, the main character] thought, that almost always there is so much irony in success.” Sloan Wilson The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit