In my latest Loonie Politics column I praise John Tory for finding the honour to resign as mayor of Toronto, and mean it the second time, instead of denying that character had any relevance to politics like most of those commenting on the affair or whispering or yelling in his ear
“But my time and labour was little worth, and so it was as well employed one way as another.”
Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe
“A general learns lessons. I’m not sure that a politician does. Or that a people does.”
Maj.-Gen Chris Vokes, My Story
“Fear cures anxiety… Real Schmerz trumps Weltschmerz. If you have had enough to drink.”
P.J. O’Rourke All The Trouble In The World [about a trip to Somalia].
“‘We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.”
Earl Nightingale, quoted by Jeff Hayden on Inc. online (www.inc.com/jeff-haden/top-350-inspiring-motivational-quotes-to-tweet-and-share.html)
“We are trying to do right: one of the wildest perils.”
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News September 28, 1907, quoted in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #5 (May/June 2022)
“They peddled on, staring back as if I had gone temporarily insane. It is not temporary.”
Roy MacGregor in National Post September 3, 2001
“my own resolve is at rock bottom, believing the best that can happen to me is to be wounded, since becoming wounded or killed is a certainty. I find comfort in an honest belief that may be God-given, that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. This I firmly belief, and often repeat it to others. It seems to give me some strength. And I have developed faith in the beatitude ‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’ While this doesn’t seem to apply in civilian life, many a meek man displays the fortitude and resolve to carry on here, while many a swashbuckler finds the first way out.”
Bob Suckling, a platoon commander with the RCR at Verrières Ridge, who had just found his batman dead from concussion without a mark on his body and had a lance-corporal shoot himself in the foot right under his nose, quoted in George Blackburn The Guns of Normandy