“To define it rudely but not ineptly, engineering is the art of doing for 10 shillings what any fool can do for a pound.”
The Duke of Wellington according to AZ Quotes [https://www.azquotes.com/author/15482-Duke_of_Wellington]
“If you want to know something about yourself, sit on your bed one night and say to yourself: ‘What is one thing I am doing wrong? That I know I am doing wrong, that I could fix, and that I would fix.’ You have to mean this. This is no game. You meditate on that and you will get an answer. It may not be the one you want but it will be the necessary one. Once you find it, you should push yourself beyond your limits of tolerance to find out where it is and how much you can work. Ask yourself, how disciplined can you be? Can you work 12 hours a day? Where is your limit? And how much work can you do? Push yourself and then back off to that point where it is sustainable. It is good to think about that as a goal. You do not want to have too much fun as it takes you out. So you want to make sure that what you are doing pushes you in every direction that you can, but you should be doing that with an aim in mind. You are trying to make yourself into a better and more competent person.”
Jordan Peterson “Discovering Personality – Black Friday Sale” email with internal title “Discover your limits” 27/11/22.
“If you can’t summon your strength, at least summon your weakness.”
Me on getting up in the morning June 12, 2001.
“Dear Mr. Chesterton,/ Isn’t one religion really just as good as another?/ Signed,/ ‘Level-Headed’/ Dear ‘Level-Headed,’/ How could it be? You have forgotten what religions are for, and have simply put the question wrong. You are asking me to choose, not even between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but between Hokey-pokey and Abracadabra. A religion is a thing which professes to tell the truth about the nature of the universe. How could any version of it be as true as any other, unless, of course, they are all of them in all respects false./ Your friend,/ G.K. Chesterton/ (Illustrated London News, Jan. 5, 1907; Gilbert Vol. 1, No. 6)”
“Chesterton’s Mail Bag” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (9-10/22)
Re the 2nd-rate composers who get exposure on “In the Shadow on Tom Allen’s excellent CBC Radio program, Music and Company… One must learn to recognize the signposts of mediocrity in life which, as a friend intoned recently, is too short to drink bad wine…. Probably 90 per cent of the renovations in our major cities would qualify for a visual version of In the Shadow – cautionary tales of mediocrity rampant on a field of good intentions.”
William Thorsell in Globe & Mail June 2, 2003 [ironically the same William Thorsell who oversaw a dreadful renovation of the Royal Ontario Museum].
“The product of over-civilisation is shamelessness.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News May 2, 1908, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (9-10/22)
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the federal Liberals, including Katie Telford in her Friday non-testimony, are violating Robson’s First Rule of Crisis Management over Chinese election meddling: When criticism erupts, take time to ponder honestly whether you did something wrong.
“Life resembles a game in which you are continually dealt ‘cards’ of enormously varied sorts, from very specific events or objects to rules large and small for playing the game. But some people are dealt things so horrifying that they never dare tell anyone they have them, and sit staring at them all through the game, not knowing how to play them or get rid of them, and hating them and the game.”
An insight that came to me in December 1987. [If you have such cards, trust the compassion of a fellow player and talk to them.]