"The habit of contemplation, the ability to sit down in front of something and care enough to let it speak for itself, cannot be acquired soon enough."

Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb p. xiii.

"Whether, in the great transfer of estates, injustice had or had not been committed, was immaterial. That transfer, just or unjust, had taken place so long ago, that to reverse it would be to unfix the foundations of society. There must be a time of limitation to all rights. After thirty-five years of actual possession, and after twenty-five years of possession solemnly guaranteed by statute, after innumerable leases and releases, mortgages and devises, it was too late to search for flaws in titles."

Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England (regarding Ireland, and arguing that James II could have put the issue to rest by confirming current owners in their title while taxing them heavily enough to pay decent compensation to the dispossessed)

 "A country that does not respect the rights of its own people will not respect the rights of its neighbours."

Andrei Sakharov, quoted in Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer The Case for Democracy

"Think. Think hard."

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News July 6, 1912 quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #3 (Dec. 2006)

"There is a saying; if you can’t dance, sit down."

Letter from "T.B. of St. Catharines" in NCC Freedom Watch Vol. 2 #13 (June 5, 2001)

"The idea of liberty has ultimately a religious root; that is why men find it so easy to die for and so difficult to define. It refers finally to the fact that, while the oyster and the palm tree have to save their lives by law, man has to save his soul by choice."

G.K. Chesterton, “The Free Man,” in A Miscellany of Men, quoted in Gilbert! Magazine Vol. 6 #3 (December 2002)

“so much of a gentleman that even his faux pas were well-bred.”

G.K. Chesterton, The Club of Queer Trades (re the fictional "Lord Beaumont of Foxwood")

 “Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."

Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson