“he has occasional flashes of silence that make it quite delightful.”
Sydney Smith, quoted in Jacques Barzun From Dawn to Decadence [on the historian Macaulay’s tendency to monopolize conversations]
“The only way to end a quarrel is to get on both sides of it. We must have not merely a calm impartiality, but rather a sympathy with partiality as it exists in both partisans. We must be not so much impartial as partial to both sides.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News June 25, 1932, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #5 (May/June 2024)
“As I’ve written here before, Charles de Gaulle resolved the long struggle between the monarchists and the republicans by creating a monarchy and calling it a republic. The French president retains extensive powers, regardless of the composition of the country’s Senate and National Assembly.”
Conrad Black in National Post July 13, 2024
“There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.”
Archie Goodwin’s internal monologue in Rex Stout Death of a Doxy [setup for admitting he made one up to do with murders].
“Keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Start with typewriters.”
Frank Lloyd Wright, quote in “Random Foolish Quotations” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 # 7 (June 2004)
“Every morning, I put on a pair of rubber boots, and not just because they are stylish.”
Letter from Fred Olthius, a hog farmer, in Maclean’s June 24, 1996, complaining about people who consider workfare demeaning.
“Truth is not a lifestyle choice”
Me July 1, 2024 [prompted by an ICMDA email subject line that day “The Surprising rebirth of belief in God”]
“It brings to mind the P.G. Wodehouse story about a ‘confusion of ideas’ between the late A.B. Spottsworth and a lion he was hunting in Kenya. The confusion was that Spottsworth thought the lion was dead and the lion thought that it wasn’t.”
John Ivison in National Post July 12, 2024 [“It” being uncertainty whether the WestJet strike was on or off]