“And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? or do we imagine we no longer need its assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this Truth, that God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a Sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?”
Benjamin Franklin, Motion for Prayers in the Constitutional Convention, 28 June 1787
“Wisdom, in short, whose lessons have been represented as so hard to learn by those who never were at her school, only teaches us to extend a simple maxim universally known and followed even in the lowest life, a little farther than that life carries it. And this is, not to buy at too dear a price. Now, whoever takes this maxim abroad with him into the grand market of the world, and constantly applies it to honours, to riches, to pleasures, and to every other commodity which that market affords, is, I will venture to affirm, a wise man…”
Henry Fielding Tom Jones
“The extent of a man’s virtue ought not to be measured by his efforts but by his usual behavior.”
Blaise Pascal Pensées
“Confucius said, ‘A good swimmer has acquired his ability through repeated practice – that means he’s forgotten the water.’” Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings (Translated by Burton Watson)
“It is in the face of death that the riddle of human existence becomes most acute. Not only is man tormented by pain and the advancing deterioration of his body, but even more so by a dread of perpetual extinction.”
The Pontifical Council for the Laity quoted in Pope John Paul II’s October 1 1999 “Letter to the Elderly”
“Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for one’s soul.”
G.K. Chesterton in Alarms and Discursions, quoted in Gilbert! Vol. 4 #8 (July/August 2001)
“My children, when you were little, we used sometimes to go for walks in our pine woods. In the open fields, you would run along by yourselves. But you used instinctively to give me your hands as we entered those woods, where it was darker, lonelier, and in the stillness our voices sounded loud and frightening. In this book I am again giving you my hands. I am leading you, not through cool pine woods, but up and up a narrow defile between bare and steep rocks from which in shadow things uncoil and slither away. It will be dark. But, in the end, if I have led you aright, you will make out three crosses, from two of which hang thieves. I will have brought you to Golgotha – the place of skulls. This is the meaning of the journey. Before you understand, I may not be there, my hands may have slipped from yours. It will not matter. For when you understand what you see, you will no longer be children. You will know that life is pain, that each of us hangs always upon the cross of himself. And when you know that this is true of every man, woman and child on earth, you will be wise.” End of “Letter to my children” in Whittaker Chambers Witness.
“Had the praise of history been passed over by former chroniclers it would perhaps have been incumbent upon me to urge the choice and special study of histories of this sort, as knowledge of the past is the readiest means men can have of correcting their conduct. But my predecessors have not been sparing in this respect. They have all begun and ended, so to speak, by enlarging on this theme: asserting again and again that the study of history is in the truest sense an education, and is training for political life; and that the most instructive, or rather the only, method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of Fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others.”
Polybius (Introduction to Book I of his Histories published in the 2nd century BC)