“the great and awful book of human folly, which yet remains to be written, and which Porson once jestingly said he would write in five hundred volumes!”
1841 Preface to Charles Mackay Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
“the road to hell may just as well be paved with no intentions as with the proverbial good ones.”
“Preface to Part Two: Imperialism” in Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism (specifically regarding the claim that the British Empire was acquired absent-mindedly).
“She didn’t wait for her ship to come in, she swam out to it.”
Letter from Maymar Gemmell in Maclean’s March 18, 1996 regarding the recently deceased Barbara Hamilton
“If chemicals had power of choice, it would be impossible to be certain that a chemical experiment would come off. If an acid ever prayed not to be led into temptation, chemistry would not be an exact science.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 19, 1913 quoted in Gilbert Magazine 9-10/08
“One of the most enduring truths is that man is a verb; but what human beings can do remains astonishing and frightening.”
Michael Young in National Review Dec. 5, 1994
In my latest Epoch Times column I denounce the Canadian Forces’ proposed plan for military chaplains as an Orwellian project in which uniformity is diversity, exclusion is inclusion and freedom is slavery.
“Christmas can be commercial and tacky – after all, graduations, weddings and funerals are often commercial and tacky – but it should never be sentimental. Sentimentality is love without sacrifice. The sentimental man sends his wife flowers but never helps with the dishes.”
Fr. Raymond J. DeSouza in National Post Dec. 24, 2002
“Things do come to those who wait, but only things left over from those who hustle.”
Not Abraham Lincoln, despite countless internet attributions. (And to be blunt, it doesn’t sound like him either, in tone or content.) It’s still a good line. But not his.