“He did not lack just the last six inches of steel: he lacked the first.”
The Economist August 24, 1991 (alas, my notes here are incomplete; it was to do with British politician Robert Boothby, but I cannot tell whether it was said by or of him).
“When you’re directionless, you only go one way.”
OK, it's me again, from December 20, 2015. (When I went to enter the source I had forgotten it was me, if it makes quoting myself any less vain.)
“he immatures with age”.
Harold Wilson (of Tony Benn) quoted in The Economist July 11, 1992
“He’s so morally bankrupt they repossessed his conscience.”
Another of my would-be witticisms, from November 1, 1991
“A grandfather and grandson who intended to fly to Australia instead found themselves in Nova Scotia... The elder Mr. [Joannes ] Rutten, who speaks German, Dutch and some English, said they didn’t know there was another Sydney.”
National Post August 11, 2009 (OK, it’s not exactly a zinger... until you add “Or such things as maps.”)
“He has the strangeness of ten.”
Quoting myself again - I don’t recall when this insult first occurred to me, but it has done so frequently since.
In my latest National Post column, while acknowledging the world-historic greatness of Justin Trudeau now that he has emergency powers, I ask whether our governments’ manifest incapacity to do even simple things including fixing health care derives from having long ago substituted make-believe for serious thought.
“I wish I were as cocksure about anything as Tom Macaulay is about everything.”
“Melbourne’s celebrated comment on Macaulay” according to a letter from John O. Voll in National Review December 2, 1991