"What’s the point of being a hedonist if you’re not having a good time?"

Lily Tomlin, Search for Signs of Intelligent Life, quoted in The New Republic Oct. 7, 1991

"We should always endeavour to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth."

G.K. Chesterton, The Apostle and the Wild Ducks, quoted in Dale Ahlquist and Peter Floriani Chesterton University Student Handbook.

"to have any meaningful 'self-esteem' one must have a meaningful sense of self. An 'itch and scratch' existence is simply not adequate."

Iain Benson in the Executive Summary to Kathleen M. Gow, "Making a God of Self-esteem: The Tyranny of Misdirected Sentiment," CRPP Discussion Paper 4

"If you are still with me at this point, it can only be because you are a serious drinker of being…"

Robert Capon The Supper of the Lamb

In my latest National Post column I argue against making the tax code even more complicated and unfair by extending charitable status in pursuit of social engineering.

"A wise observer has said that young people will give their lives for an exclamation point, but they will not give their lives for a question mark."

Richard John Neuhaus in First Things #169 (Jan. 2007)

"When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic. It is not a 'law,' for we do not understand its general formula...."

G.K. Chesterton in “The Ethics of Elfland” in Orthodoxy quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #3 (Nov.-Dec. 2007)

"How gloomy would be these mansions of the dead [catacombs] to him who did not know that he shall never die..."

Imlac in Samuel Johnson The History of Rasselas, reflecting on how brief and futile even illustrious lives can seem