“history; which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”
Edward Gibbon Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“Why does the Post Office return a letter that’s one cent short on the postage? It costs more than a cent to get the extra penny. But if they didn’t, almost everyone would send insufficient postage letters and they’d lose a fortune.”
This one is from me (January 2, 2002) and if you think it prosaic, well, it’s still an important principle of economics.
“that cruelty which is the last defense of a horribly pained sensitivity...”
My source for this in my notes is “A Common Reader catalogue # 14, 8/88” and it wouldn’t be fair to ask you what it means but sadly it wouldn’t be productive to ask me either
“The world is filled with willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.”
Widely attributed to Robert Frost online, but I haven’t seen any actual specific place he supposedly said or wrote it
“Deja moo: The feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.”
“Gilbert Magazine’s Top 15 Yet More Internet Taglines” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #6 (and yes, it bends my rule against vulgarity but I find it sufficiently funny)
“All habits are bad habits.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Joseph Connors in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 2 # 8 (July-August 1999)
“As George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, once said, ‘the best qualification of a prophet is to have a good memory.’”
Chris Kilford in Ottawa Citizen Jan. 12, 2015
“human behaviour ultimately derives from human volition – tastes, attitudes, values, and so on – and these aspects of volition in turn are either formed entirely by choices or are the product of biological or social processes that we cannot or will not change.... The one thing we cannot easily do, if we can do it at all, is change, by plan and systematically, the minds of men.”
James Q. Wilson Thinking About Crime