“We are incessantly told that past periods were very bad; and I cheerfully agree that they must have been most horribly bad, if they were really worse than the period we are asked to praise.”

G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly January 18, 1930 quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #3 (Jan.-Feb. 2024)

“Fat constituted a menace to his own well-being, a charge that could be brought against many people.”

Philip K. Dick VALIS [re his alter ego Horselover Fat being locked up via a “‘danger to yourself’” law]

“For forms of government let fools contest:/ Whate’er is best administer’d is best:/ For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;/ His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right;/ In faith and hope the world will disagree,/ But all mankind’s concern is charity:/ All must be false that thwart this one great end,/ And all of God that bless mankind or mend.”

Alexander Pope “Essay on Man”

In my latest National Post column I say we need a mature and courteous response to the American retreat into isolationism, not emotionally gratifying childish outbursts of petulant fantasy.

“A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense has really become very uncommon. Straightforward ideas appear strange and unfamiliar, and any thought that does not follow the conventional curve or twist, is supposed to be a sort of joke.”

G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly November 2, 1933 quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #4 (March/April 2024)

“Jane Austen’s wonderful quip: ‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?’”

Mark Johnson in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #4 (March/April 2024) [It turns out to be the long-suffering father of the Bennett girls in Pride and Prejudice]

“Discipline will take you places that motivation can’t...”

Slogan I first saw on a T-shirt at Douvris Martial Arts that is widely cited online without definitive or even plausible initial attribution

In my latest Epoch Times column I say the persistent interest of federal authorities in requiring us to show identity papers on demand reveals that whatever it is that our politicians claim to love out Canada it certainly isn’t our true legacy of liberty.