"Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this ‘commonsense’ vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace." C.S. Lewis A Grief Observed

"he [André Malraux] was fond of quoting Napoleon’s proclamation, 'My life is quite a novel.'" Algis Valiunas reviewing Olivier Todd’s Malraux: A Life in National Review July 4, 2005 - and I suppose a "pithy" quotation fails if it requires an extensive gloss, but I have to add my reaction on reading this line, namely that if you ever notice such a thing about your own life you need to consider urgently the question "Yes but by which author?"

"The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilized man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do." G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 18, 1906, reprinted in Gilbert! Vol. 3 #5 (March 2000)

"Socialism… is full of the idea that an ordinary person is incompetent and must be superseded by an official – who is also an ordinary person. Their whole philosophy is that a thing must not be done by somebody but by somebody else." G.K. Chesterton in New Witness July 6 1916, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 20 # 1 (Sept.-Oct. 2016)

"So long as we are willing to include death among possible alternatives, we shall always be free to choose." James Burnam

"You could have the most beautiful race car in the world, but if you try to run it on beer, it’s not going to work." Anthony Robbins, Unlimited Power

"Without religious convictions, we would be so many Cains…" Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

"’What about a train ride?’ I’d asked the [Intourist] clerk. ‘Is the Trans-Siberian Railroad any fun?’ She stared at me. ‘It will be long remembered,’ she said." P.J. O’Rourke Eat the Rich