“Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step. De Maistre says that ‘to know HOW TO WAIT is the great secret of success.’”
Samuel Smiles Self-Help
“The catch-22 of the aesthete is that he lives for a new experience, but all experiences are old as soon as they pass....Wilde wrote, ‘I myself would sacrifice everything for a new experience, and I know there is no such thing as a new experience at all’...”
Joseph Pearce in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 #7
“It is not familiarity but comparison that breeds contempt. And all such captious comparisons are ultimately based on the strange and staggering heresy that a human being has a right to dandelions; that in some extraordinary fashion we can demand the very pick of all the dandelions in the garden of Paradise; that we owe no thanks for them at all and need feel no wonder at them at all.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted by David W. Fagerberg in First Things March 2000
“it is the nature of man not to have a nature.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, quoted in Mortimer Adler Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought (Adler does not agree with Merleau-Ponty, but thinks the idea well worth pondering)
“‘it may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.”
“Wisdom from Granny and Gramps” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 # 7 (June 2004)
“Whosoever is out of patience is out of possession of his mind, body and soul.”
Sir Francis Bacon, quoted in the “Federalist Patriot” No. 04-34 25 August 2004 from federalist.com
“Every activity has its own specific goal. Pleasure very probably ensues in most cases when this goal is reached, but that is a different matter.”
I.A. Richards Principles of Literary Criticism
“How ludicrous and outlandish is astonishment at anything that happens in life.”
Marcus Aurelius Meditations