"the study of man in the ordinary business of life".
Alfred Marshall's definition of economics, cited in Marshall Jevons Murder at the Margin
"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life."
Often attributed to Immanuel Kant but appears to be from Will Durant, part of Durant's effort to explain Kant's thought (whatever the merits of his analysis, Kant's often impenetrable prose style did not lend itself to bon mots)
"The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius. Talent is a docile creature. It bows its head meekly while the world slips the collar over it... It draws its load cheerfully, and is patient of the bit and of the whip. But genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild blood makes it hard to train."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe & Mail December 4, 2001
"if there is any permanent element in him [man generally], his conscience in all probability cannot be destroyed, although it can be covered up and disregarded. To tamper with it, therefore, to try to destroy it, is of all conceivable courses of conduct the most dangerous, and may prepare the way to a wakening, a self-assurance, of conscience fearful to think of. But suppose that the fungus theory is the true one. Suppose that man is a mere passing shadow, and nothing else. What is he to say of his conscience? Surely a rational man holding such a theory of his own nature will be bound in consistency to try and to determine the question whether he ought not to prune his conscience just as he cuts his hair and nails. A man who regarded a cold heart and a good digestion as the best possible provision for life would have a great deal to say for his view.”
James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty Equality Fraternity
"'Pah!' snarled Nikabrik. 'You badgers would have us wait till the sky falls and we can all catch larks.'"
C.S. Lewis Prince Caspian
"There’s an ancient saying: 'The world would be a clean place if we each swept in front of our own doorsteps.'"
Ottawa psychotherapist Dawn Brown quoted by Linda Mondoux in Ottawa Citizen November 22, 2006
“One of the most eerie phenomena of our era, Eric Hobsbawm states in his masterful history Age of Extremes; The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991, is the ‘destruction of the past.’ Most young people, he argues, now ‘grow up in a sort of permanent present lacking any organic relation to the public past of the times they live in.’”
Sean Mills in The Beaver April-May 2005
In my latest National Post column I say it’s odd for people claiming to stand against Trump-style divisive politics to rant and rave about Doug Ford as a dictator trampling our rights.