"To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man."
G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Andrew Coyne in Maclean’s Jan. 21, 2008
In my latest National Post column I express amazement at the ruckus over the Roman Catholic Church insisting that... communion wafers must contain wheat.
"True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful."
Paul Sweeney, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail December 20, 2004
“Religion may very well be an illusion, as Freud said, but then man himself is that illusion.”
William Barrett The Illusion of Technique
"St. Augustine, asked what he would do if he knew the world would end tomorrow, replied, 'I would go on working in my garden.'"
Florence King in National Review May 1, 1995 p. 92.
"It is an unfortunate habit of publicly repenting for other people’s sins."
G.K. Chesterton, “The Midnight of Europe,” in The Crimes of England, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #2 (October-November 2003)
"'How did you go bankrupt?' Bill asked. 'Two ways,' Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly.'"
Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (frequently misquoted or misattributed including to Mark Twain or F. Scott Fitzgerald according to www.sovereignman.com/offshore/slowly-at-first-then-all-at-once-12909, which warned that it applies to nations too)
"If you do not do what you say you will do, you can only rule, never lead."
"Thought for today” on the blackboard of the Pacific Coffee Company in Exchange Square, Hong Kong, quoted by Charles Gordon in Ottawa Citizen November 11, 1999