“When fortune empties her chamberpot on your head, smile – and say ‘we are going to have a summer shower.’”
Sir John A. Macdonald, quoted by Dave Ryan in The Western Standard May 3, 2004
“Our happiness in this life is thus, on many occasions, dependent on the humble hope and expectation of a life to come: a hope and expectation deeply rooted in human nature; which can alone support its lofty ideas of its own dignity; can alone illumine the dreary prospect of its continually approaching mortality, and maintain its cheerfulness under all the heaviest calamities to which, from the disorders of this life, it may sometimes be exposed.”
Adam Smith The Theory of Moral Sentiments
“I shall waste no time reading your book.”
I do not recall the source of this marvellous veiled insult but alas I did not invent it.
‘‘It is a monotonous memory which keeps us in the main from seeing things as splendid as they are.’”
G.K. Chesterton quoted by James V. Schall, SJ in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 2 # 8 (July-August 1999)
“When the affairs of a country are in a bad way it is useful to remember Oliver Cromwell’s advice to look back to the time when things went well and to try to see what subsequently went wrong. Complete success in such a task is rarely possible, but partial success would clearly repay the effort involved if it helped to unravel something of the tangled story of the rise and decline of great nations.”
Start of Introduction in F.R. Cowell Cicero and the Roman Republic
In my latest National Post column I say the short sad history of compact fluorescent bulbs shows how good government is at “picking winners”.