“Diana was not interested in fixing us. Krishna and Siddhartha wanted to fix a different problem. Muhammed supposed that we could fix ourselves. Moses gave us the law of God which shows the true nature of the problem, but he did not give us power to follow it. For that, he looked to the Messiah yet to come, and according to Christianity, that Messiah was Jesus. He is not parallel to any of the others. Only He claimed not to teach but to be the surgery of God.”

J. Budziszewski The Revenge of Conscience

“’He’s sort of peculiar, that one,’ Gibson admitted. ‘Acts like he was raised on sour milk.’”

Louis L’Amour The Riders of High Rock

“even if the whole of the man-made world could, through relentless effort and sacrifice, be modelled to rival St. Mark’s Square, even if we could spend the rest of our lives in the Villa Rotonda or the Glass House, we would still often be in a bad mood.”

Alain De Botton The Architecture of Happiness

“The clash between science and religion was supposed to be a defining characteristic of the modern age. But today’s distinctive terror is modern science in the service of religious fanatics – or, in North Korea, of fanatics drunk on the dregs of the pseudo religion of scientific socialism…” George Will in National Post Jan. 2 2003

“I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.”

Charles Dickens.

“We are no more responsible for the evil thoughts which pass through our minds than a scarecrow (is) for the birds which fly over the seedplot he has to guard; the sole responsibility in each case is to prevent them from settling.” Churton Collins, aphorisms in the English Review (1914).

“So long as the world is inexhaustibly interesting, we have reason to be cheerful.” Theodore Dalrymple in National Post December 27 2003

“The modern idea is that cosmic truth is so unimportant that it cannot matter what anyone says.”

G.K. Chesterton, Heretics