“Un tour de faiblesse”
Another of mine, from c. May 21, 2007
“‘It was the nation,’ Churchill would afterwards demur, ‘that had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.’…. In addition to giving the lion voice, he allowed he might have ‘sometimes suggested to the lion the right place to use his claws.’”
Andrew Coyne in National Post September 19, 2001
“There is also, just for the record, the cold comfort of knowing that all empires crumble when hubris and militarism alienate even their closest allies, distant wars entangle them in bloody conflicts, and popular leaders are exposed as self-serving frauds. I’m not saying this is especially good news, just that it is history’s lesson.”
Mark Kingwell in National Post March 19, 2003
“It is only a more traditional spirit that is truly able to wander. The wild theorists of our time are quite unable to wander. When they talk of making new roads, they are only making new ruts. Each of them is necessarily imprisoned in his own curious cosmos.”
G.K. Chesterton's Introduction to “Fancies and Fads” quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 # 4 March-April 2022
“It’s just that nothing seems to be much fun any more, and that’s horrible, for when you’ve said that, there’s nothing more to say.”
Betsy’s internal monologue in Sloan Wilson The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill, quoted by Jeff Hayden on Inc. online (www.inc.com/jeff-haden/top-350-inspiring-motivational-quotes-to-tweet-and-share.html
“Do not invoke Gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Paul Campos “Is Apathy over God Good?” in Denver Rocky Mountain News September 19, 2003, noted in “Chesterton is Everywhere” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 #6 (April/May 2004)
“This girl reminds me of Dreyfus. The army does not believe in her innocence.”
A joke apparently from Sigmund Freud, quoted by Michael Potemra in a review of F.H. Buckley’s The Morality of Laughter in National Review June 30, 2003