“The inner courtyard boasted a fountain, a stretch of lawn and some comparatively unobjectionable early baroque cloisters.”

Hans Hellmut Kirst The Night of the Generals [and credit translator J. Maxwell Brownjohn for rendering that "damning with faint praise" insult so well]

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the Liberals’ inept response when the SNC-Lavalin scandal erupted makes you wonder what politicians are good at, since they seem to be almost as bad at politics as at governing.

“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

Will Durant, quoted on www.hound-dog-media.com/2014/01/gamblers-fools-and-egotists-59-still_31.html

“history teaches, as no other subject can, the sad fact that acts have consequences.”

Robin Neillands, The Wars of the Roses