“After the gleam of exaggerated hopes, what Kipling called the Gods of the Copybook Headings have come back to croak out their ancient saws, whose only merit is that they happen to be true.”
The Economist December 22, 1990
“Count that day lost, whose low descending sun views from thy hand no worthy action done."
"Charles Stanford (1823-86)", quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe & Mail Oct. 15, 1999
“Some apparent advantages followed for a season from a rule which had its origin in a violent and perfidious usurpation, and which was upheld by all the arts of moral corruption, political enervation, and military repression. The advantages lasted long enough to create in this country a steady and powerful opinion that Napoleon the Third's early crime was redeemed by the seeming prosperity which followed. Not often in history has the great truth that ‘morality is the nature of things’ received corroboration so prompt and timely.”
John Morley On Compromise
“‘I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism. – Roberto Rossellini; 1906-1977”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2238066-i-am-not-a-pessimist-to-perceive-evil-where-it
In my latest National Post column I say that acts of evil, including the mass shooting at two New Zealand mosques, result from deliberate cultivating of evil thoughts.
“He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.”
Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci according to izquotes.com/quote/leonardo-da-vinci/he-who-does-not-punish-evil-commands-it-to-be-done-275351