“That is informative merely about you, madam, not about the problem.”
Nero Wolfe to a client in Rex Stout The Mother Hunt regarding her thought processes.
“The opinions of our enemies come nearer to the truth about us than do our own opinions.”
LaRochefoucauld, quoted in Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
“If it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it.”
Marcus Aurelius, quoted on Instagram by “dailystoic” September 15, 2021
“I will not shut me from my kind,/ And, lest I stiffen into stone,/ I will not eat my heart alone,/ Nor feed with sighs a passing wind:/”
Alfred Lord Tennyson “In Memoriam” CVIII
“Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:3 (KJV)
“‘God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,’ whispered Anne softly.”
The end of Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.”
C.S. Lewis quoted by Russ Kosits in Convivium Vol. 2 #11 (December 2013 - January 2014) - Kosits calls it “the ‘argument from desire’ made famous by C.S. Lewis”
“Of course, bitterness has its comforts, as every resentful person knows. It allows you to feel superior to the world without actually doing anything; it gives you permanent occupancy of the high moral ground. But as a way of life it is very unsatisfactory and restricting.”
Theodore Dalrymple in National Review March 24, 2003