“In Mr. Arcand’s film [Les Invasions Barbares], there are many suggestions that, like Rome, our culture has become decadent enough to be vulnerable to barbarians, however unworthy they may be. Most barbarians have the vigour of their appetites, if not the courage of their convictions. The barbarians who savaged America on 9/11 had the courage of their convictions, too."

William Thorsell in Globe & Mail August 30, 2004

"Half his power lay in a conciliating trick of sinking the commander in the leader."

E.W. Hornung, The Amateur Cracksman gentleman thief

Thinking "Outside the box is one thing – outside the brain is another entirely."

The Report magazine March 3, 2003 [I failed to record the author]

“Mr. Swinburne does not hang up his stocking on the eve of the birthday of Victor Hugo. Mr. William Archer does not sing carols descriptive of the infancy of Ibsen outside people’s doors in the snow…. The strange truth about the matter is told in the very word ‘holiday.’… It is hard to see at first sight why so human a thing as leisure and larkiness should always have a religious origin. Rationally there appears no reason why we should not sing and give each other presents in honour of anything--the birth of Michael Angelo or the opening of Euston Station.  But it does not work. As a fact, men only become greedily and gloriously material about something spiritualistic."

G.K. Chesterton Heretics

"The shortest distance between two points is under construction."

Noelie Altito
 

"Et ce n’est pas important la guerre des moutons et des fleurs?"

The prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Le Petit Prince

We should "learn from history, not be obsessed by it"

Queen Elizabeth II in a speech in Berlin on Nov. 2, 2004, quoted in Ottawa Citizen Nov. 3 2004

"I rather like materialism. The poor need it."

"V.S. Naipaul, Nobel laureate in literature, answering a question from an audience in India”
 quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail August 12, 2009