“Not that bore again.”
Queen Victoria on being told she must yet again send for the now-83-year-old William Gladstone to form yet another ministry, quoted in Conrad Black Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present
“What convinces mankind of a man’s sincerity is this: that every now and then he should go with his principles and against his feelings.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Oct. 10, 1907, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)
“Confucius was the greatest of all agnostics, and he did really make an agnostic civilisation; for ages it has been remarkable for its spirit of order; but not even a lunatic would say it was remarkable for its spirit of reform.”
G.K. Chesterton “Resurrection” in G.K.’s Weekly April 19, 1936 reprinted in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)
“I think Canada’s politics has sunk into deep ruts. I think we need fresh and serious thinking about what kind of country we want to be.... For a decade our political parties, our Parliament, our public service and the other institutions of our democracy have been putting more and more energy into forgetting how to make decisions. Instead they’re all-in for message amplification.... There’s a forced, hollow certainty to too much of our political discourse that barely masks timidity and confusion behind.... We’re building cults of personality around people with unremarkable personalities.”
Paul Wells email/Substack April 10, 2025 [https://paulwells.substack.com/p/what-an-election-wont-fix]
“‘It is feeling and force of imagination that makes us eloquent,’ but ‘shout and bellow with uplifted hand, pant, wag your head, smite your hands together, slap your thigh, your breast, your forehead, and you will go straight to the heart of the dingier members of your audience.’”
Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria according to Will Durant Caesar and Christ
“If you wish to have little spare time, do nothing.”
Anton Chekov, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail May 13, 2003
“If the evil is to be absent, it shall be because we have routed it; not because we have fled from it.”
G.K. Chesterton in Reveille November, 1918, quoted in “Evil and Other Evils” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #6 (July-August 2024)
“IF AN AIRLINE PILOT CAN REMEMBER ALL THE BUTTONS… YOU TOO CAN USE THE TURN SIGNAL LEVER”
Graphic emailed by a friend without attribution