"This study is an attempt to tell them that, not only is the Emperor naked, but his body is hardly a thing of beauty."

William Stanbury in Fraser Forum August 1998 [the actual topic was CanCon regulations, but the statement is apt surprisingly often]

"When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic. It is not a 'law,' for we do not understand its general formula...."

G.K. Chesterton in “The Ethics of Elfland” in Orthodoxy quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #3 (Nov.-Dec. 2007)

"People will not look forward to posterity who will not look backward to their ancestors."

Edmund Burke
 

Especially in his speeches and lectures Ludwig von Mises "would emphasize again and again that interventionist policies are 'wrong,' not from the point of view of the economist himself, but from the point of view of those initiating these policies (or at least from the point of view of those whose well-being the policies are supposed to enhance)."

Israel M. Kirzner in Edwin G. Dolan, ed., The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics

"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