“men who are called practical; and the much more practical pertinacity of the man who is called theoretical.”
G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas: “The Dumb Ox”
“The most basic form of human stupidity is forgetting what we are trying to accomplish.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7517225-the-most-basic-form-of-human-stupidity-is-forgetting-what) {BTW I have found this in various forms including “common” rather than “basic” - it’s apparently from Human, All Too Human but I couldn’t track down the German original]
"J'ai décidé de vivre"
Title of a book by Philippe Croizon, who swam the English channel after losing both arms and both legs in an electrical accident, and who has also skydived, quoted on MSNBC September 19, 2010
"If the only way around distress is to stop loving, well, then, let us be men about it and settle for distress.”
Robert Capon The Supper of the Lamb (the reference is not just or even primarily to romantic love but to fondness for all good things such as food, whiskey etc.)
“The river of human nonsense flows on forever.”
G.K. Chesterton, “A Sermon on Inns,” in The Flying Inn, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #1 (September 2003)
“Laugh, and the world laughs with you;/ Weep, and you weep alone;/ For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,/ But has trouble enough of its own…. There is room in the halls of pleasure/ For a large and lordly train,/ But one by one we must all file on/ Through the narrow aisles of pain.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Solitude,” in William Bennett The Book of Virtues [beginning and end of the poem]
“‘What is it that I don’t know?’ Sir Humphrey feigned ignorance. ‘Minister,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what you don’t know. It could be almost anything.’”
A Jim Hacker diary entry in Yes Minister Vol. I
“Men go abroad to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.”
St. Augustine, quoted on title page of John Stewart Collis Living With A Stranger: A Discourse on the Human Body.