“A grandfather and grandson who intended to fly to Australia instead found themselves in Nova Scotia... The elder Mr. [Joannes ] Rutten, who speaks German, Dutch and some English, said they didn’t know there was another Sydney.”
National Post August 11, 2009 (OK, it’s not exactly a zinger... until you add “Or such things as maps.”)
“He has the strangeness of ten.”
Quoting myself again - I don’t recall when this insult first occurred to me, but it has done so frequently since.
In my latest National Post column, while acknowledging the world-historic greatness of Justin Trudeau now that he has emergency powers, I ask whether our governments’ manifest incapacity to do even simple things including fixing health care derives from having long ago substituted make-believe for serious thought.
“I wish I were as cocksure about anything as Tom Macaulay is about everything.”
“Melbourne’s celebrated comment on Macaulay” according to a letter from John O. Voll in National Review December 2, 1991
“Well, things are back to abnormal.”
Quoting myself from July 6, 2002 (and they still seem to be).
“Dear Mr. Dule: That would not be a ‘solution,’ it would be an approach. Let us know how it turns out. Cordially, WFB”
William F. Buckley Jr. in National Review June 26, 1995 (responding to a letter from a man claiming more conservatives than liberals were bald and asking if should become liberal to avoid hair loss)
Sir John A. “Macdonald slew [John Joseph Caldwell] Abbott with a single phrase: ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘a sweet smile. All from the teeth outward.’”
Pierre Berton The National Dream
“Homegoroshi: The Japanese technique of humiliating a person with exaggerated compliments.”
Globe & Mail September 25, 2000