"He was ruled by a sense of duty, but one cannot touch tar without getting one’s hands dirty." John Lawrence, A History of Russia (re Felix Dzerzhinsky)

"Human nature demands ritual everywhere. Abolish your ritual, and you get an inferior ritual. Destroy your impressive ceremony, and all you get in return is an unimpressive ceremony." G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News March 17, 1906, quoted in Gilbert! Vol. 6 #3 (December 2002)

"The hatchet was buried, but the handle was still visible." A news story about George W. Bush meeting with Bill Clinton in the Ottawa Citizen December 20, 2000

"I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous." Father Brown in G.K. Chesterton "The Sins of Prince Sardine"

"Civilisation is a precarious balance between barbaric vagueness and trivial order..." W.H. Auden, summarizing A.N. Whitehead, according to Robert Conquest Reflections on a Ravaged Century

"[I]t is the mark of an educated man to look for precision to each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits..." Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

"He can be compelled, who does not know how to die." Seneca

"There are two kinds of people in politics: those who want to be somebody, and those who want to do something." An adage often cited by European Community founder Jean Monnet among others