Wilfrid Quotes

For Catholics before Vatican II, the land of the free was pre-eminently the land of Sister Says-except, of course, for Sister, for whom it was the land of Father Says.

Of course, history is only a muddle of facts and a fuddle of professors, and anyone who thinks it is one clear voice saying "Arise, sir Knight" deserves a life sentence in Camelot.

I am quite prepared, if we can do it without any disrespect to the Crown of England, to bring our titles to the marketplace and make a bonfire of them.

The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term

Fraternity without absorption, union without fusion.

Canada is free and freedom is its nationality.

I am not here to parade my religious sentiments, but I declare I have too much respect for the faith in which I was born to ever use it as the basis of a political organization

One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.

Quebec does not have Opinions, but only sentiments.

Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy - but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are palaces of misery.

If I were not French I would choose to be - Scotch.

We who are left, how shall we look again Happily on the sun or feel the rain Without remembering how they who went Ungrudgingly and spent Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?

We French-Canadians belong to one country, Canada: Canada is for us the whole world: but the English-Canadians have two countries, one here and one across the sea.

The twentieth century belongs to Canada.

A colony, yet a nation - words never before in the history of the world associated together.

It would be simply suicidal to French Canadians to form a party by themselves.

For us, sons of France, political sentiment is a passion; while, for the Englishmen, politics are a question of business.

I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find.

The Englishman respects your opinions, but he never thinks of your feelings.

Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.

The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.

The only reason I didn't kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers in New York and I couldn't decide which one to jumo into.

Buck Rogers, I believe, is an illegitimate child of Galactica. I only hope Galactica won't turn in its grave.

The Divinity could be invoked as well in the English language as in the French.

If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.

The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.

Whether splendidly isolated or dangerously isolated, I will not now debate; but for my part, I think splendidly isolated, because the isolation of England comes from her superiority.

Mr Michener, as timeless as a stack of 'National Geographics,' is the ultimate Summer Writer. Just as one goes back to the cottage in Maine, so one goes back to one's Michener.

Beware the fictionist writing his own life. Even candor becomes a strategy.

As you approach the presidency, no one seems worthy of it, since it wasn't designed for a human in the first place.

How does one make a movie about decadence these days? Now that we're allowed to do it, it's too late.

The spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick.

Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.

Every writer is a writer of the generation before.

As things now stand, the office is a slightly meaner battleground than the home. Male bosses seem to dominate their women underlings as they would never dominate their wives.

Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.

Scott Fitzgerald is a sound you like to hear at certain times of the day, say at four in the afternoon and again late at night, and at other times it makes you slightly sick.

Mushy reviews are a breach of faith

The actual Irish weather report is really a recording made in 1922, which no one has had occasion to change. "Scattered showers, periods of sunshine."

The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.

Books about suicide make lousy gifts.

Censors will try to censor a little bit more each year (because, like editors and other officious people, censors don't feel they are getting anywhere unless they are up and doing).

Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test.

Even the God of Calvin never judged anyone as harshly as married couples judge each other.

It's the old case against symbols: if you get them, they seem obvious and artificial, and if you don't, you miss the whole point.

Whether or not Big Brother is watching us, we certainly have to watch him, which may be even worse.

Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.

It is necessary for us to have an imperfect freedom so that we can give ... if we cannot give anything to God, we do not have a share in his Spirit, who by his very nature is Gift.

We French-Canadians belong to one country Canada: Canada is for us the whole world: but the English-Canadians have two countries one here and one across the sea.

The Englishman respects your opinions but he never thinks of your feelings.