“You can observe a lot just by watching.”
Emailed by a friend and attributed to Yogi Berra, plausibly, though it exists in various versions including "You can see a lot, just by looking" and "You can observe a lot by watchin'" and "You can observe a lot by just watching" [see for instance https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/25697/what-is-the-source-of-the-quote-you-can-see-a-lot-just-by-looking].
“Kevin Costner, who throughout the movie [Message in a Bottle] displays the sensitivity and eloquence of a pizza deliveryman.”
John Simon in National Review March 22, 1999
“Most famously, there is the telegram from Gilbert, who was off on a lecture tour, to Frances in Beaconsfield: ‘Am in Market Harborough. Where should I be?’ Frances wired back her unforgettable one-word answer: ‘HOME!’ It was easier, as she later explained, to get him back and then start him off again.”
An item whose author I did not record in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 #3 (Dec. 2000)
“I did but prompt the age to quit their cloggs/ By the known rules of antient libertie,/ When strait a barbarous noise environs me/ Of Owles and Cuckoos, Asses, Apes and Doggs.”
John Milton On the Detraction Which Follow’d Upon My Writing Certain Treatises
“Kim Campbell… named by the National Geographic Society as one of history’s 50 ‘most important’ political leaders…. on a list … in a new reference book – the Almanac of World History, recently published by the society … ‘It’s ridiculous,’ says Michael Bliss… But … ‘Given that there have not been that many females who have led nations, we chose to include her,’ says Jane Sunderland, a project manager at the Washington D.C.-based society, who says she ‘stands by the choice’ of the book’s authors.… ‘I don’t think Kim Campbell should even make a list of great Canadian leaders,’ he [James Marsh, editor-in-chief of The Canadian Encyclopedia] says. ‘She was the first and only (female) prime minister of Canada – and that’s stretching her accomplishments to the limit.’… the Almanac says nothing about her legacy except that she is a woman…. The top 50 world leaders, according to the Almanac of World History, in alphabetical order: Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) Atilla the Hun (ca 406-453) Benazir Bhutto (1953 -) Bilqis, The Queen of Sheba (10th Century BC) Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) Kim Campbell (1947 -) Catherine de Medicis (1519-1589) Catherine the Great (1729-1796) Charlemagne (742-814) Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Cleopatra (69-30 BC) Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) Elizabeth I (1533-1603) Fu Hsi (2900 BC) Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) Genghis Khan (ca 1162-1227) Hannibal (247-183 BC) Emperor Hirohito (1926-1989) Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) Isabella of Castile (1451-1504) Empress Jingo (ca 169-269) Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) John Kennedy (1917-1963) William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950) Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924) Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) Sir John A. Macdonald (1815-1891) Nelson Mandela (1918 -) Moctezuma I (reigned 1440-1469) Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) Nero (A.D. 37-68) Pericles (ca 495-429 BC) Eva Peron (1919-1952) Chief Pontiac (ca 1720-1769) Ramses II (reigned 1304-1237 BC) Romulus (753 BC) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) Shanakdakhete (reigned 177-155 BC) Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) Raden Suharto (1921 -) Suleyman the Magnificent (1494-1566) Margaret Thatcher (1925 -) Getulio Vargas (1883-1954) Queen Victoria (1819-1901) George Washington (1732-1799) William the Conquerer (ca 1028-1087) Mao Zedong (1893-1976)”
Ottawa Citizen April 10, 2004
“Satire depends on sanity, and on contrast with insanity; that is why there is very little satire left.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly July 16, 1927 quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)
“he was using platitudes to fight stereotypes on behalf of a cliché.”
David Klinghoffer on Edward Zwick, director of The Siege, in National Review Dec. 7, 1998
“Rachel, you’re a long way from desperate.” “I may not be there but I’m on the bus.”
An exchange on a short-lived sitcom called “Flesh ‘n’ Blood” that I apparently watched on Oct. 11, 1991 for reasons I could not possibly now begin to explain.