“From the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

Immanuel Kant, quoted in Brian Lee Crowley The Road to Equity

“No one is better placed to resist pressure than the person who knows he can’t give in to it.”

Conor Cruise O’Brien The Siege

“but that is the way fear serves us: It always sides with the thing we are afraid of.”

George MacDonald The Princess and the Goblin

“I hate a man who swallows [food], affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters.”

Charles Lamb, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail December 20, 2002

“‘There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.’”

C.S. Lewis, quoted by Douglas Jackson in Gilbert! magazine January-February 2002

“His head, once shaven, was covered with stubble, uniform with his chin, like a clipped yew in a neglected garden.”

Evelyn Waugh Scoop

“When I was 17, I read a quote somewhere that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And when the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

Steve Jobs’ June 122005 commencement address at Stanford University, reprinted in National Post June 30, 2005

“They hate and detest war as a thing manifestly brutal, and yet practised by man more constantly than by any kind of beast.”

Thomas More Utopia