"A good leader never walks by a mistake."
An “oft-repeated maxim” of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, according to Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, Stormin’ Norman
"I am put in mind of a little book, titled Manners, that my own grandmother gave me as a child…. printed in 1912…. which I have sadly misplaced… good for a laugh when I was a teenager…. It was a noble little book, as I came to see later…. Implicit within every statement in the book was a conception of civilization, an aspiration to raise ourselves up. Not simply to ‘get ahead,’ but to rise out of the slovenly condition of being barbaric."
David Warren in Ottawa Citizen April 9, 2002 [reflecting on Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother]
"They are good people in the worst sense of the word."
Mark Twain on the religious right of his day, quoted by Jay Nordlinger in National Review April 19, 1999 [actually quoting Garrison Keillor quoting Twain].
"it is the only true object of existence to mean something"
G.K. Chesterton, "The Heraldic Lion," in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton
"Half his power lay in a conciliating trick of sinking the commander in the leader."
E.W. Hornung, The Amateur Cracksman gentleman thief
Thinking "Outside the box is one thing – outside the brain is another entirely."
The Report magazine March 3, 2003 [I failed to record the author]
“Mr. Swinburne does not hang up his stocking on the eve of the birthday of Victor Hugo. Mr. William Archer does not sing carols descriptive of the infancy of Ibsen outside people’s doors in the snow…. The strange truth about the matter is told in the very word ‘holiday.’… It is hard to see at first sight why so human a thing as leisure and larkiness should always have a religious origin. Rationally there appears no reason why we should not sing and give each other presents in honour of anything--the birth of Michael Angelo or the opening of Euston Station. But it does not work. As a fact, men only become greedily and gloriously material about something spiritualistic."
G.K. Chesterton Heretics
"Et ce n’est pas important la guerre des moutons et des fleurs?"
The prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Le Petit Prince