“When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.” Edgar Watson Howe

“I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.”

Lord Nelson

“A man does not attain the status of Galileo merely because he is persecuted; he must also be right.”

Stephen Jay Gould.

"All history is contemporary history."

Benedotto Croce

“The aim of all human polity is happiness. There is no obligation to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or in any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happy.”

G.K. Chesterton Outline of Sanity.

“Calm is not life’s crown, but calm is well”

Matthew Arnold, quoted in Stefan Collini, Arnold.

“If you shoot for the moon, maybe you’ll only get to the street lamp, but at least you got off the ground.” Dennis Koslowski, after winning bronze in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1988 Olympics (he won silver in 1992)

“'Can’t you lead a good life without believing in Christianity?’ This is the question on which I have been asked to write, and straight away, before I begin trying to answer it, I have a comment to make. The question sounds as if it were asked by a person who said to himself, ‘I don’t care whether Christianity is in fact true or not. I’m not interested in finding out whether the real universe is more like what the Christians say than what the materialists say. All I’m interested in is leading a good life. I’m going to choose beliefs not because I think them true but because I think them helpful.’ Now frankly, I find it hard to sympathize with this state of mind…. Christianity is not a patent medicine.”

C.S. Lewis “Man or Rabbit?” in The Grand Miracle