“If dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!”
Charles Lamb, quoted by P.J. O’Rourke The Bachelor Home Companion
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the New York Times may be thrilled by elite cultural phenomena like vegan mattresses and sound baths coming out of California. But normal people are more worried about disorder, depravity and crime spread by “Do what thou wilt” elite attitudes run amok.
“As for Martin, he was firmly persuaded that a man is badly off wherever he is, so he suffered in patience.”
Voltaire Candide
“the aim of studying history is not to forget its lessons when occasion arises for its practical application, or to decide that the present situation is different after all, and that therefore its old eternal truths are no longer applicable; no, the purpose of studying history is precisely its lesson for the present. The man who cannot do this must not conceive of himself as a political leader; in reality he is a shallow, though usually very conceited, fool, and no amount of good will can excuse his practical incapacity.”
You may hate me for this one, and I did hesitate before posting it, because the source is Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. But it remains true even if the person who said it was evil.
“10 floors of basement.”
Then Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #5 (May/June 2022 describing the HUD building in Washington DC designed by Bauhaus school architect Marcel Breuer.
In my latest Epoch Times column I contrast the Canadian federal government’s sluggish incapacity even to agree to hand out cash to get other people to build houses with the endless vaulting promises of our politicians to deliver social justice, world peace and better weather.
“I try to enthuse my patients with the glory of the world, with indifferent success, I must admit. It is almost as if they wanted the world to be boring, to justify their own lack of interest in it. To be bored and disabused is taken by many people nowadays as a sign of spiritual election or superiority, as if the world does not quite come up to their exacting standards.”
Theodore Dalrymple in National Post December 27, 2003
“If you’ve got to eat an elephant, you shouldn’t be surprised if after the first few mouthfuls you’re not down to the bones.”
“Britain’s top military officer … chief of defence staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup” quoted in Ottawa Citizen Sept. 10, 2007 [at a NATO meeting, re the Afghan mission, but it remains good advice despite the ultimate debacle there].