"Religion makes us joyful about the things that matter. Fashionable frivolity makes us sad about the things that do not matter."

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News, February 16, 1924, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 3 #8, July/August 2000

"The commander of the local French naval district… answered as if he were conversing with a fungus."

Clive Cussler in The Sea Hunters (a true story, in which the commander is answering Cussler)

"The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from this is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being."

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News October 21, 1905, quoted in Dale Ahlquist and Peter Floriani, Chesterton University Student Handbook

"This is not to say that there may not be a case in justice for correcting positions which have been determined by earlier unjust acts or institutions. But unless such injustice is clear and recent, it will generally be impractical to correct it. It will on the whole seem preferable to accept the given position as due to accident and simply from the present onwards to refrain from any measures aiming at benefiting particular individuals or groups."

Friedrich Hayek in Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2

"it’s a good thing to have bubbles burst, because you cannot sustain a bubble indefinitely."

Milton Friedman, in an interview in National Review September 28, 1998
 

"The king [Hrolf, to Bodvar] said, 'I knew when you came here that few would be your equal, but it seems to me that your finest achievement is that you have made Hott into another champion. He was previously thought to be a man in whom there was little probability of much luck.'"

The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki

"Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful."

Aldous Huxley, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail July 8, 2004

"I have always felt myself to be a stranger here on earth, aware that our home is elsewhere."

Malcolm Muggeridge in 1988, quoted in Joseph Pearce Literary Converts