“We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities.”
John Winthrop, quoted by Richard John Neuhaus in First Things November 2002
“Paradox is the only basket large enough to hold truth…”
Robert Capon The Supper of the Lamb
“For it is only the love of honour that never grows old; and honour it is, not gain, as some would have it, that rejoices the heart of age and helplessness.”
Thucydides quoting Pericles’ “Funeral Oration” from The Peloponnesian War (an online version; other translations exist, obviously)
“It is quite easy to give people a second nature, if you catch them early enough. There is no belief, however grotesque and even villainous, that cannot be made a part of human nature if it is inculcated in childhood and not contradicted in the child’s hearing.”
George Bernard Shaw Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism (he cites foot-binding, ritual suicide when the king dies and suttee).
“If they’ll do it with you, they’ll do it to you.”
A rule attributed to “Dr. Phil” in a letter from Shannon Bunkowsky of Winnipeg in Maclean’s Oct. 23, 2006
“Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.”
George Sand, quoted on https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/george_sand_390195
“Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.”
G. K. Chesterton Orthodoxy
“The expression [“the Show Me State”] was coined as an insult by outsiders and was meant to suggest that Missourians were so stupid that they had to be shown how to do everything. The state’s inhabitants, however, contrarily took it as a compliment, persuading themselves that it implied a certain shrewd caution on their part.”
Bill Bryson Made in America