“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

Abraham Lincoln, quoted in the American Spectator August 1988

“What if lawyers and economists wrote the sitcoms? Very likely, they would turn out so that they more closely approximated the agony and pain of real life, which is really so frightening that it simply has to be funny.”

An author whose name I did not record in The American Spectator August 1988

Réflexions morales #174 “Il vaut mieux employer notre esprit à supporter les infortunes qui nous arrivent qu’à prévoir celles qui nous peuvent arriver.”

La Rochefoucauld Maximes

“When you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Winston Churchill, quoted in William D. Gairdner The Trouble With Democracy

“Now that God is dead, however, or at least comatose”

Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic Monthly March 2004

“Perhaps the world is divided into those who laugh first and think afterwards, and those who think first and laugh afterwards.”

G.K. Chesterton in American Review September 1935, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008)

In my latest National Post column I argue that the solution to toxic anger in politics, far easier said than done, is neither to cause nor succumb to it.

“People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.”

“George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail June 8, 2012