"We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile."
Hilaire Belloc, quoted in “The Catholic Buckley” in George William Rutler He Spoke to Us, saying they were "written after gazing upon the ruins of Timgad in North Africa, a city destroyed by the Vandals”
"It is really a strange thing that there should not be room enough in the world for men to live, without cutting one another’s throats."
George Washington, in W.B. Allen, ed., Washington: A Collection
In my latest National Post column I dismiss various criticisms and call Prince Harry's engagement to Meghan Markle a good thing including the amazing progress in race relations it reflects.
"What beats me is how any body of men can delude themselves into thinking that they can abolish war as an instrument for settling international disputes. No sane person wants wars; that is a recognized fact, but we have them just the same. No one wants jails, hospitals, insane asylums, murders, robberies, etc.; but we have them just the same. Why? Well, in my opinion it can be given in just two words – human nature, a condition which is the same today as it was when Noah built the Ark, as it was when Julius Caesar enlarged the Roman Empire, and as it was when the Princess Pats marched down Bank street, many years ago, on their way overseas."
Letter from a G.H. Giles of Ottawa in Ottawa Citizen Sept. 4, 1931, reprinted in Ottawa Citizen Oct. 19, 1999
"There’s no such thing as a bad day when there’s a doorknob on the inside of the door".
Paul Galanti, former Navy Commander and Vietnam War POW, quoted in National Post March 24, 2003
In my latest National Post column I say the Canadian Prime Minister's inability to see the People's Republic of China clearly is not harmless naiveté.