“’People say to me, that it is but a dream to suppose that Christianity should regain the organic power in human society which once it possessed. I cannot help that; I never said it could. I am not a politician; I am proposing no measures, but exposing a fallacy, and resisting a pretence. Let Benthamism reign, if men have no aspirations; but do not tell them to be romantic, and then solace them with glory; do not attempt by philosophy what was once done by religion. The ascendancy of Faith may be impracticable, but the reign of Knowledge is incomprehensible.’”

John Henry Newman, “The Tamworth Reading Room” (1841) quoted in Russell Kirk The Conservative Mind

“Teach me neither to cry for the moon nor over spilt milk.”

“The late George V had these framed words hanging on the wall of his library in Buckingham Palace” according to Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

“We are not any of us very nice.”

W.H. Auden, quoted by Rod McDonald in Ottawa Citizen March 20, 2001

“In general, the thing that is most, sort of, rational and best for your own self-interest is to be nice.”

David Rand, “a Harvard biology graduate student researcher”, about a study he and professor Martin Nowak did involving repeated iterations of a version of prisoner’s dilemma, quoted on www.ctv.ca March 19, 2008

“I believe… That our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become…. I believe… That you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them…. I believe… That we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel…. I believe… That either you control your attitude, or it controls you…. I believe… That sometimes when I’m angry I have the right to be angry, but that doesn’t give me the right to be cruel.”

Somone emailed this “I believe” document to me as a Power Point presentation around August 2005. It seems to be extant online in various forms with “Author unknown” or words to that effect.

“People asked him [Thomas Edison, almost totally deaf from childhood] why he didn’t invent a hearing aid. Father always replied, ‘How much have you heard in the last twenty-four hours that you couldn’t do without?’ He followed this up with: ‘A man who has to shout can never tell a lie.’”

Edison’s son Charles in William Bennett The Book of Virtues

“for God, there are no throw-away people”

“Rev. André Drouin, a parish priest at Ste. Anne, a downtown Ottawa church” who worked among others with AIDS patients, quoted in Ottawa Citizen Dec. 1, 2000

“Why is it called tourist season if we can’t shoot at them?”

“More Unanswerables” in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #4 (1-2/04)