“I had a great idea this morning but I didn’t like it.”
A piece of “Samuel Goldwyn apocrypha” quoted in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail December 28, 2004
“These old wild images [of centaurs and mermaids, noble in their human parts] included a crucial truth. Man is a monster. And he is all the more a monster because one part of him is perfect.”
G.K. Chesterton “Questions of Divorce,” in Alvaro De Silva, ed. Brave New Family Brave New Family: G.K. Chesterton on Men & Women, Children, Sex, Divorce, Marriage & the Family
“‘He’s... he’s an extraordinary man.’”
Chief Inspector Dreyfuss re Jacques Clouseau in A Shot in the Dark
“As no one ever reads history, it was natural enough that there should be a great deal of disappointment, and a great deal of astonishment.”
Hugh Walpole, “Major Wilbraham,” in Chancellor Press Great Ghost Stories [the specific focus of the disappointment is with the immediate results of the end of World War I]
In my latest National Post column I tell the Church of England that putting a miniputt in venerable Rochester cathedral means you’re not serious about religion.
“1st Officer Spock: Consider the alternatives, Mr. Scott./ Lt.-Cmd. Scott: We have no fuel! What alternatives?/ Mr. Spock: Mr. Scott, there are always alternatives.”
Star Trek “The Galileo Seven (1967)” quoted on imdb.com
“‘Everything is possible for him who possesses courage and activity,’ she said, with a look resembling one of those heroines of the age of chivalry whose encouragement was wont to give champions double valour at the hour of need, ‘and to the timid and hesitating everything is impossible, because it seems so.’”
Sir Walter Scott Rob Roy (the words are spoken by Diana “Die” Vernon to the hero Frank Osbaldistone)