“I have only one fault, namely, that I am evil.”
Another “Needhamism” from the then-just-deceased columnist Richard J. Needham, quoted by Malcolm MacLeod of St. John’s in letter to the Globe & Mail July 30, 1996
“I could, perhaps, like others, have astonished thee with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact… because my principal design was to inform, and not to amuse thee…. a traveller’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad, as well as good, example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.”
Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels
“Jack Cohen (a science writer and reproductive biologist), defined mankind not so much as Homo Sapiens Sapiens, but as Pan Narrans – the story-telling ape.”
John Thompson and Joe Turlej Other People’s Wars
“Life isn’t a dress rehearsal. There are some mistakes that just can’t be corrected.”
A retired high school teacher quoted by Dave Brown in the Ottawa Citizen September 12, 1998
“Hasten slowly.”
Suetonius, quoted in Patrick Hughes and George Brecht, Vicious Circles and Infinity
“It is quite certain that there is no good without the knowledge of God; that the closer one comes, the happier one is, and that ultimate happiness is to know him with certainty; that the further away one goes, the more unhappy one is, and that ultimate unhappiness would be to be certain of the opposite [to him].”
Pascal Pensées
“What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 No. 2 (Oct.-Nov. 2000)
“One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.”
Anthony Powell, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail June 5 2000