“If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’

William Morris The Beauty of Life (1880 lecture) later published in Hopes and Fears for Art

“When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’” Sydney Harris

“the real enemy of faith is not doubt, but merely the mental insensitivity that does not see what all the fuss is about.”

Northrop Frye The Great Code

“It is not nothingness that is incredible. It is existence. Death would be a logical alternative to life, but it is a preposterous sequel to it.” John Robson

“if I can’t be a Shining Example to you, let me at least be a Horrible Warning!”

British journalist Jan Struther (creator of Mrs. Miniver) to her own daughter on the subject of untidy rooms

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Albert Einstein

“Sex is the mysticism of materialism. We are to die in the spirit to be reborn in the flesh, rather than the other way around.”

Malcolm Muggeridge Tread Softly for you Tread on my Jokes, 1966 (quoted in Ian Hunter, ed., The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge)

“We are not living in the delicious intoxication of the successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after.”

Aldous Huxley Ends and Means