"A man who shows no resentment at being slapped is overwhelmed with insults and forced into need."

Blaise Pascal Pensées (one of his examples of the wisdom of “Ordinary people”)

"Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle."

Woody Allen, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail Feb. 15, 2011 [I realize Allen has been revealed as a pretty unsavoury character... but it's still a good line even if it could fairly be applied to him]

"He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities."

Robertson Davies Fifth Business

 “The motto ‘Do the right thing and let God take care of the consequences’ makes sense only on the assurance that he will take care of the consequences. Without that assurance, doing the right thing means taking care of the consequences – or trying to.”

J. Budziszewski in First Things June-July 2002

"The questions are not how or when we die. It is how and why we live."

Ron McCloskey in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 5 #5 (March 2002)

“Over the years, I have come to understand a critical difference between the world of fear and the world of freedom. In the former, the primary challenge is finding the inner strength to confront evil. In the latter, the primary challenge is finding the moral clarity to see evil.”

Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer The Case for Democracy

“In his new memoirs, Decision Points, George W. Bush...  tells of one summer job on a cattle ranch in which the foreman derided those who were ‘Book smart, sidewalk stupid.’"

William Watson in Ottawa Citizen December 7, 2010

"Perhaps, like me, the reader is sufficiently antique to recall a time when genius was normally reserved for that rare soul who, in Dr. Johnson’s phrase, ‘can do readily what no one else can do at all’..."

A writer whose name I did not record in Chronicles magazine Jan. 1988