“how much human nature loves the knowledge of its existence, and how it shrinks from being deceived, will be sufficiently understood from this fact, that every man prefers to grieve in a sane mind, rather than to be glad in madness.”
St. Augustine City of God
"That is the worst idea... since Abraham Lincoln said, ‘I'm sick of kicking around the house all day, let's go take in a show.’"
Edmund Blackadder in Black Adder Goes Forth [it turns out he actually called it “the worst idea in the history of entertainment” according to https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0526713/characters/nm0000100 - such are the perils of checking quotations].
“A person who never travels always praises his own mother’s cooking.”
A Baganda proverb “roughly translated” according to Philip Turner, who spent 10 years as a missionary in Uganda, in First Things June-July 2005.
“There is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom, some spark of friendship for human kind, some particle of the dove kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and serpent”.
David Hume, quoted in William Bennett The Book of Virtues.
“The measurement of outcomes in higher education is still in the dark ages. There’s still a very strong sense that universities are ultimately measured by the quality of their professoriate and their scholarly output, with relatively less attention paid to the quality of the student experience and the calibre of the learning that goes on. We profile creative and illustrious alumni, and we rub the latest prestigious report or ranking in our hair, but I worry that the actual serious measure of what we’re about is still in its early stages.”
University of Toronto president David Nayor in a Q&A with Kate Fillion in Maclean’s November 13, 2006
“I no longer think of it as [writer’s] block. I think that is looking at the problem from the wrong angle. If your wife locks you out of the house, you don’t have a problem with your door.”
Anne Lamott Some Instructions on Writing and Life (her point being that you’re not blocked from getting something out that is inside you, you’re empty)
“Perfection is not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, quoted in The Economist June 15, 1991
“We must not provide against the loss of wealth by poverty, or of friends by refusing all acquaintance, or of children by having none, but by morality and reason.”
Plutarkhos, aka Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus Plutarch’s Lives Vol. I