“Ambrose Bierce wrote of an inventor who built a moon rocket. When he fired it up, it bored straight down into the earth. A while later he crawled up out of the hole, and triumphantly announced, ‘My invention has proved correct in all its details; the defects are merely basic and fundamental!’ … whereupon the investors rushed forward to press money on him for the next attempt.”
Spider Robinson in Globe & Mail April 27, 1999
“‘Like the land of the Brobdingnagians,’ said Turnbull, smiling. ‘Oh, Where is that?’ said MacIan. Turnbull said bitterly, ‘In a book,’ and the silence fell suddenly between them again.”
G.K. Chesterton The Ball and the Cross, as header quotation on David Beresford in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023)
“There is one thing infinitely more absurd than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted by David Cregg in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 16 #4 (Jan.-Feb,. 2013)
“The universal mark of ‘social reforms’ is the general attempt of the wealthy to get the needy well under their control.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Jan. 25, 1913, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022)
“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Oscar Wilde in Lady Windemere's Fan [https://idiomorigins.org/origin/knows-the-price-of-everything-the-value-of-nothing and widely quoted online though often as “A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”]
“There’s an expression in chess: ‘Play the board, not the man.’ That’s not quite right. You want the bulk of your moves to be objective and analytical. But being good at chess also requires being good at reading people.”
Bruce Pandolfini in National Post April 24, 1999
“I can never hear of one of those savage or idolatrous faiths without wishing that I belonged to it. When I read of savages worshipping an odd-looking stone, I think what sensible fellows they must be. When I am told of a chieftain who believes he is descended from a shark, I wish sincerely that I could share his delusion. As a matter of intellect and conviction I believe in one religion; but, as a matter of fancy and sympathy I can believe in any number…. I can feel a sympathy for any religion that is a religion.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Oct. 10, 1908, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 # 7 (June 2004)
I was a French Werewolf by Lou Garew.
Another of my supposedly funny invented “Who Wrote What” book titles, January 2024