“the honesty of Partridge was equal to his understanding, and both dealt only in small matters…”

Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

“When you boil it all down, commitment is making a choice to give up other choices. The deeper, most joyous part [of life] can’t be had by hanging on to everything.”

Scott Stanley, The Power of Commitment

“History ends at least once and occasionally more often in the history of every civilization. As the civilization’s universal state emerges, its people become blinded by what Toynbee called ‘the mirage of immortality’ and convinced that theirs is the final form of human society.”

Samuel Huntington The Clash of Civilizations

“I’m an entrepreneur and a capitalist. I like to spin straw into gold.” Dan Aykroyd, quoted in Ottawa Citizen Jan. 20 2000

Cato the Elder “used to assert, also, that wise men profited more by fools, than fools by wise men; for that the wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.”

Plutarch Lives

“To really enjoy the better things in life, one must first have experienced the things they are better than.”

Oscar Homolka

“He who loves the Workman and His work, and does what he can to preserve and improve it, shall be accepted of Him.”

John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson late in their lives, quoted by Richard John Neuhaus in First Things December 2001

“It’s déjà vu all over again.” Yogi Berra