"As Mr. Pond knows, the last lesson of the wise man is that the fool is sometimes right."

Steve Miller in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #6

"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."

William Arthur Ward, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail Dec. 1, 2003

"How gloomy would be these mansions of the dead [catacombs] to him who did not know that he shall never die..."

Imlac in Samuel Johnson The History of Rasselas, reflecting on how brief and futile even illustrious lives can seem

"a strange creature, hard to swallow and impossible to digest."

Detective Nero Wolfe re one of the people involved in a case, in Rex Stout The Golden Spiders

"The narrowest hinge on my hand puts to scorn all machinery."

Walt Whitman, quoted in John Stewart Collis, Living With A Stranger: A Discourse on the Human Body

"As heretical as it may seem to institution-bound historians, the study of history has essentially been a self-help project."

James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg in The Great Reckoning 

"The Law of Supply and Demand. As inexorable as the Law of Gravity, even governments cannot break it, although they often try."

William Trench in Only You Can Save Canada

 "I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid."

Terry Bradshaw, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Jan.-Feb. 2002