"'Do you believe in God, Winston?' ‘No.’ ‘Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?’ ‘I don’t know. The spirit of Man.’ ‘And do you consider yourself a man?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors.'"

O'Brien and Winston Smith in George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four

 "He has planted his last potato. Han har satt sin sista potatis."

“Idioms from Sweden” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2005)

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the fact that Trudeau already had to shuffle his cabinet with an eye to the 2019 election reminds us how politicians, obsessed with partisan victory not politics, squander the time they have to make a difference in government.

"'Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die!'"

Hester Prynne in Nathanial Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter, quoted in William J. Bennett The Book of Virtues

"people for whom 'history' is whatever happened two weeks ago, the same people who will be likely to assure us in their next breath that Britney Spears, or some other confection du jour, is the greatest pop singer 'of all time.' Imagine that. All time. That term might even span as much as a whole decade."

Wilfred M. McClay in First Things February 2002