“When bad things happen, they are never the bad things that were inevitable. You may be quite certain that, if an old pessimist says the country is going to the dogs, it will go to any other animals except the dogs.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 17, 1926, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 #6 (April/May 2004)
“It is my conceit to expose myself to reproach only from others, never from myself.”
Nero Wolfe to the client in Rex Stout The Mother Hunt
“Make it happen. Greatness is not in where we stand but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But sail we must and not drift. Nor lie at anchor.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, a quotation that hockey player Sidney Crosby kept on his dresser according to Reader’s Digest Canadian Edition October 2005
“I am not severe – I am sweet by nature. But I defend the rigidity principle. God is stronger than human weakness and deviations. God will always have the last word.”
Pope John Paul II, quoted in the Ottawa Citizen April 3, 2005
“A contest of wills? Surely you’d be disqualified.”
Another of my “witticisms”, from August 20, 2015
“Maybe it’s not the world that’s at fault. Maybe it’s you.”
Jordan Peterson on Instagram Sept. 10, 2021
In my latest National Post column I say that politicians and voters need to make a New Year’s resolution to think about why bad things are happening and how to stop or reduce them instead of just wishing them away.
“Our greatest yet with least pretence,/ Great in council and great in war,/ Foremost captain of his time,/ Rich in saving common-sense,/ And, as the greatest only are,/ In his simplicity sublime.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington”