“They talk a great deal about education, because it is compulsory education. Whether or no they can educate, they are always eager to compel. But as a fact their aim is the very contrary of education. It is the destruction of education, and even of experience. It is to make men forget the past, forget the facts, forget the very memories of their own lives. And if their compulsory culture spreads successfully, it is very likely that we shall be alone in knowing what was known to every man, woman and child, in the hour of our danger and deliverance.”

G.K. Chesterton in New Witness Sept. 24, 1920, quoted in standalone boxed quotations headed “Education” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #2 (Nov.-Dec. 2021)

“At forty he [the villain, Jack Bolt] was an embittered man who blamed the world for the success that had never come to him, failing to understand that the fault was his own. He was one of those who had always wanted to start at the top, and the idea of consistent effort to get there had seemed futile to him.”

Louis L’Amour The Riders of High Rock

In my latest Epoch Times column I argue that political party conventions are more interesting, and more useful to voters and parties alike, if they are not tightly scripted.

“Distance doesn’t matter. It is only the first step that is difficult.”

Marquise du Deffand, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail October 18, 2002

“The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive.”

G.K. Chesterton as a standalone quotation in illustration, without further attribution, in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2022)

“She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say ‘when.’”

P.G. Wodehouse quoted by Joseph Bottum in First Things October 2005 # 156

“Since life passes, whether sweet or bitter,/ Since the soul must pass the lips. Whether in Nishpur or in Balkh,/ Drink wine, for after you and I are gone many a moon/ Will pass from old to new, from new to old.”

Omar Khayyam, cited in Sadegh Hedayat’s deeply disturbed novel The Blind Owl

“‘The history of the world is but the biography of great men,’ wrote Carlisle in 1841. ‘There is properly no history,’ echoed Emerson that same year, ‘only biography.’”

The Beaver February-March 1998