“Hasten slowly.”
Suetonius, quoted in Patrick Hughes and George Brecht, Vicious Circles and Infinity
“It is quite certain that there is no good without the knowledge of God; that the closer one comes, the happier one is, and that ultimate happiness is to know him with certainty; that the further away one goes, the more unhappy one is, and that ultimate unhappiness would be to be certain of the opposite [to him].”
Pascal Pensées
“What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 No. 2 (Oct.-Nov. 2000)
“One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.”
Anthony Powell, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail June 5 2000
“A child is born into a world of phenomena, all equal in their power to enslave. It sniffs – it sucks – it strokes its eyes over the whole uncomfortable range. Suddenly one strikes. Why? Moments snap together like magnets, forging a chain of shackles. Why? I can trace them. I can even, with time, pull them apart again. But why at the start were they ever magnetized at all – just those particular moments of experience and no others – I don’t know. And nor does anyone else.”
The psychologist in Peter Shaffer’s play Equus, quoted by “Teller” (I believe my note to myself on this source means the author was Raymond Joseph Teller of “Penn and Teller”) in The Atlantic Monthly June 2001
“You have to have a lot of patience to learn patience.”
“Stanislaw Lec Polish writer (1909-66)” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail May 9, 2013
“Their art for art’s sake was a drunken variant of the stern age’s commerce for commerce’s sake, science for science’ sake.”
Garry Wills Chesterton (regarding the decadents of the 1880s and 1890s)
“usually to be found nailing his colors to the fence”.
Humphrey Carpenter regarding former Church of England Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, quoted in National Review October 14, 1996