“The woman who makes a dog the centre of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping. The man who makes alcohol his chief good loses not only his job but his palate and all power of enjoying the earlier (and only pleasurable) levels of intoxication…. this law… may be stated as follows: every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made. Apparently the world is made that way. If Esau really got the pottage in return for his birthright, then Esau was a lucky exception. You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first. From which it would follow that the question, What things are first? Is of concern not only to philosophers but to everyone.”

C. S. Lewis, “First and Second Things,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, edited by Walter Hooper

“Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny, and of nothing else. The question of whether a man expresses himself in a grotesque or laughable phraseology, or in a stately and restrained phraseology, is not a question of motive or of moral state, it is a question of instinctive language and self-expression. Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or German. Whether a man preaches his gospel grotesquely or gravely is merely like the question of whether he preaches it in prose or verse…. in this sense the two qualities of fun and seriousness have nothing whatever to do with each other, they are no more comparable than black and triangular. Mr. Bernard Shaw is funny and sincere. Mr. George Robey is funny and not sincere. Mr. McCabe is sincere and not funny. The average Cabinet Minister is not sincere and not funny.”

G.K. Chesterton in Heretics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1LUXQWzCno “’And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.’ That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

Linus van Pelt quoting Luke 2:8-2:14 (KJV) in A Charlie Brown Christmas

“if we do take history seriously without taking it for granted, isn't the triumph of Christianity the strangest thing that ever happened? Rome under Tiberius was not some ignorant backwater but the most cosmopolitan society the world had ever seen, and the eastern Mediterranean was its intellectual centre. And where Greek philosophy, ancient religions and Roman pragmatism met, some fishermen, a tax collector and a guy who had a seizure on the way to Damascus persuaded their neighbours, people in distant cities and then the Empire itself that a dead Jewish carpenter was God.” John Robson in the Ottawa Citizen September 13 2000

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

Albert Einstein

“I have the brain of a mollusc.”

Nero Wolfe, the fictional genius detective, when he finally realizes something he then considers obvious, in Rex Stout The Silent Speaker

“Hope and fear cannot alter the seasons.” Chogyam Trungpa

“We urgently prayed to God to leave the world. This He has done, at our request. A gaping hole remains. We constantly pray to this hole, without result. No one answers. We are angry or disappointed. Is this a proof of the nonexistence of God?” Leszek Kolakowski in First Things June-July 2003