"The only thing one can be proud of is having worked in such a way that an official reward for your behaviour cannot be envisaged by anyone."

Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), French writer and filmmaker, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail April 5, 2011. (Cocteau was in fact a member of the Académie française and the Royal Academy of Belgium, a Commander of the Legion of Honor and a member of the Mallarmé Academy, the German Academy (Berlin), the American Academy, the Mark Twain (U.S.A) Academy, as well as Honorary President of the Cannes film festival, Honorary President of the France-Hungary Association and President of the Jazz Academy and of the Academy of the Disc, which tells you what intellectuals' pose of rebellion is generally worth.)
 

"Trying to understand the nature of man without recognizing him as the imago Dei is like trying to understand a bas-relief without recognizing it as a carving of a lion."

J. Budziszewski in First Things June-July 2002

"The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can’t ignore it, top it; if you can’t top it, laugh at it; if you can’t laugh at it, it’s probably deserved."

Russell Lynes, in "Thought du jour" in Globe and Mail July 26, 2001

"Of what use is a dream if not a blueprint for bold action?"

Bruce Wayne in the original 1966 Batman movie

In my latest National Post column I insist that, since Islam is a religion not a race, whatever concern about radical Islam might be it cannot be racism.

On August 24, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev stepped down as chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was something of a hapless performance. And in one sense, Gorbachev can and should be seen as a bumbler. But the most important thing about him was a fundamental decency that meant the end of communism was remarkably bloodless. 

"newspapers are fond of referring to the ‘dust-bin of history,’ a notion they borrow not from Karl Marx, as they think, but from an English writer and member of Parliament, August Birrell. On inspection the bin is much less full than is commonly believed. The repeats and returns in the last five centuries have been frequent."

Jacques Barzun From Dawn to Decadence