“More than 1,500 pieces of graffiti were preserved in Pompeii when that Roman city was buried in volcanic ash 1,922 years ago. They include: ‘Aufidius was here.’ ‘Marcus loves Spendusa.’ ‘I am amazed, O wall, that you have not collapsed and fallen, since you must bear the tedious stupidities of so many scrawlers.’ Source: The Washington Post.”

Globe & Mail July 12, 2001 p. A16

“principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth.”

Jonathan Swift quoted by Rondi Adamson in Ottawa Citizen December 16, 2001

“But history is no respecter of Congresses. For some reason or other (it may be an historical law, which thus far has escaped the attention of the scholars) ‘nations’ seemed to be necessary for the orderly development of human society and the attempt to stem this tide [post-1815] was quite as unsuccessful as the Metternichian effort to prevent people from thinking.”

Hendrik Van Loon The Story of Mankind

“The physics of fire ant rafts could help engineers design swarming robots”

Headline on post at Watts Up With That March 6, 2022 [https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/06/the-physics-of-fire-ant-rafts-could-help-engineers-design-swarming-robots/] and press release on EurekAlert! March 2, 2022 [https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/945224] – I quote it not because I doubt it but because to me in conjures up images not of a bright future but of “Leiningen Versus the Ants”.

“it is perfectly permissible and perfectly natural to become bored with a subject just as it is perfectly permissible and perfectly natural to be thrown from a horse or to miss a trail or to look up the answer to a puzzle at the end of the book.”

GKC, “A Defence of Bores,” in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton

“Attention, application, accuracy, method, punctuality, and despatch, are the principal qualities required for the efficient conduct of business of any sort. These, at first sight, may appear to be small matters; and yet they are of essential importance to human happiness, well-being, and usefulness. They are little things, it is true; but human life is made up of comparative trifles. It is the repetition of little acts which constitute not only the sum of human character, but which determine the character of nations.”

Samuel Smiles Self-Help

“This negligence [by people who simply don’t give religion much thought] in a matter where they themselves, their eternity, their all are at stake, fills me more with irritation than pity; it astounds and appalls me; it seems quite monstrous to me…. One needs no great sublimity of soul to realize that in this life there is no true and solid satisfaction, that all our pleasures are mere vanity, that our afflictions are infinite, and finally that death which threatens us at every moment must in a few years infallibly face us with the inescapable and appalling alternative of being annihilated or wretched throughout eternity.”

Peter Kreeft Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensées Edited, Outlined & Explained

“Sir, Friends of the vanishing apostrophe should start with Westminster City Council, whose vans carry the message: ‘Were working for a cleaner City.’ Yours faithfully, PAMELA HUTCHINSON, 6 Cleveland Gardens, W2, March 12.”

Letter in the Times March 14, 1984 [sent to me by my father, a connoisseur of all things rhetorical including sloppy usage and its foes]