“Kuan Tzu had a saying that I much approve of: ‘Small bags won’t hold big things; short well ropes won’t dip up deep water.’” Confucius in Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings

“An architect I used to know complained that when people hired him, they made it clear that they loved to be innovative but didn’t want to do anything for the first time.” Robert Fulford The Triumph of Narrative

“Because of the goodness of God I have had a happy unhappy life, which is preferable to an unhappy happy one.” John Lukacs At the End of an Age

“Bad humour is an evasion of reality; good humour is an acceptance of it.” Malcolm Muggeridge in Ian Hunter, ed., The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge

“the key point about a challenge is that the person being challenged must have faith that he has at least a reasonable chance of mastering it. Otherwise the ‘challenge’ becomes a seemingly impassable barrier.” Raymond Price With Nixon

“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If a trade-off has to be made, we can at least have the moral courage to face it, instead of kidding ourselves with words. Yet the intelligentsia go around saying things like ‘It’s not a question of either/or,’ and using phrases like ‘win, win.’” Thomas Sowell Is Reality Optional?

“Always love virtue before you love duty; the reverse method produces dried souls, incapable of joy.” G.K. Chesterton “The School Magazines,” in Res Paulinae, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #6.