“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

“Narcissism: when one grows too old to believe in one’s uniqueness, one falls in love with one’s complexity.”

John Fowles in Daniel Martin Chapter 2 according to en.wikiquote.org [a friend had cited a slightly different version from memory at a dinner].

“‘If he is dead to-day,’ he [Phocion to a tumultuous Athenian crowd following a rumour that Alexander the Great had died] said, ‘he will be so to-morrow and the day after to-morrow equally. So that there is no need to take counsel hastily or before it is safe.’”

Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, Plutarch’s Lives II

“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.”

G.K. Chesterton in “The Riddle of the Ivy” in Tremendous Trifles, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 3 No. 4 (Jan/Feb. 2000)

“But despite the current, almost mystical belief in communication-as-problem-solving – talk doesn’t always help.”

Lillian Breslow Rubin Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family

“I definitely am going to take a course on time management… just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.”

“Louis Boone (1914-65), American critic” quoted in Cy Charney The Salesperson’s Handbook

“Like a true philosopher, Flambeau had no aim in his holiday; but, like a true philosopher, he had an excuse. He had a sort of half purpose, which he took just so seriously that its success would crown the holiday, but just so lightly that its failure would not spoil it.”

G.K. Chesterton Favorite Father Brown Stories

In my latest National Post column I argue that the surge in opioid overdose deaths alone since March proves that in weighing the benefits of pandemic lockdowns, science and economics alike demand that we also count the very real human costs.