“There are no words to express how much...”
Another "He's an extraordinary man" insult (and in fact I did say it, inspired by a friend's wedding leaflet but without malice).
“Saul Gorn once told me his theory of asceticism: ‘It is well known that the longer one postpones a pleasure, the greater the pleasure is when one finally gets it. Therefore, if one postpones it for ever, the pleasure should be infinite.'”
Raymond Smullyan 5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies
Re George Macdonald Fraser’s Flashman series: “Alfred Knopf said of the first book (and, being the shrewdest of publishers, meant it as a compliment) that he hadn’t heard such a voice in fifty years.”
A writer whose name I failed to record in National Review July 10, 1995
If you enjoy a lively, controversial, definitely counter-consensus take on all kinds of issues, check out Rex Murphy’s new “RexTV” on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZygLRdUzljg
“‘Frankly,’ I reply, ‘I wouldn’t know how to describe the difference.’”
John O’Sullivan in National Review March 25, 1996 (the specific reference was people who diet down to ugly sticks then ask “Notice any change in me?” but it offers far broader “He’s an extraordinary man” possibilities)
“It is a good thing to suffer fools gladly; and an even better thing to enjoy fools uproariously.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News October 9, 1920, quoted in “Chesterton Rewrites more of the Classic Lines” in Gilbert Magazine July-August 2007
“He is one of the undersung linebackers.”
Announcer on ABC Monday Night Football December 1, 1986
“we might say, like the Frenchman asked if he had lunched on the boat, ‘au contraire.’”
G.K. Chesterton, “Reflections on Thursday” (looking back at writing The Man Who Was Thursday) reprinted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #8 (July-August, 2007)