“History presents many occasions for citing Charles Peguy’s aphorism that God writes straight with crooked lines.”

Richard John Neuhaus in First Things August/September 2000

“It is better to play for nothing than to work for nothing.”

Adam Smith, quoted in Jan de Vries The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600-1750

“The road to glory cannot be followed with much baggage.”

Confederate General Richard Ewell quoted in James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War & Reconstruction

“As no one ever reads history, it was natural enough that there should be a great deal of disappointment, and a great deal of astonishment.”

Hugh Walpole, “Major Wilbraham,” in Chancellor Press Great Ghost Stories [the specific focus of the disappointment is with the immediate results of the end of World War I]

In my latest National Post column I tell the Church of England that putting a miniputt in venerable Rochester cathedral means you’re not serious about religion.

“History has always, and properly, been regarded as ‘the school of princes’. We should not hesitate – we should be eager – to make it the school of peoples.”

Paul Johnson The Offshore Islanders

“brilliant, but not correct.”

Quoted in Horace Porter Campaigning with Grant as “what Cuvier said of the French Academy’s definition of a crab”.