“This sort of thing happens because most people, if not all, although they wish to do a fine thing, choose the course that is profitable.”
Aristotle Ethics
“the deep but neglected truth that melancholy is inescapably self-important, whereas there is a relative impersonality about cheerfulness.”
Stefan Collini Arnold
“You have a disagreeable way of being right.” “It’s the curse of a distrustful nature.”
An exchange between two characters on the TV show Law and Order September 4, 1997. I am not certain the “disagreeable way” is verbatim and I did not record which characters. If you disapprove of this sloppiness, complain to my editor.
“’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.