“The [French] Revolution appealed to the idea of an abstract and eternal justice, beyond all local custom or convenience. If there are commands of God, then there must be rights of man. Here Burke made his brilliant diversion… the modern argument of scientific relativity; in short, the argument of evolution. He suggested that humanity was everywhere molded by or fitted to its environment and institutions; in fact, that each people practically got, not only the tyrant it deserved, but the tyrant it ought to have. ‘I know nothing of the rights of men,’ he said, ‘but I know something of the rights of Englishmen.’ There you have the essential atheist.”

G.K. Chesterton What’s Wrong with the World

“Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us, no matter what we are doing?... What do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you?... If you have anything better to be doing when you are overtaken, get to work on that.”

Epictetus, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen To Go

“From the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

Immanuel Kant, quoted in Brian Lee Crowley The Road to Equity

“No one is better placed to resist pressure than the person who knows he can’t give in to it.”

Conor Cruise O’Brien The Siege

“but that is the way fear serves us: It always sides with the thing we are afraid of.”

George MacDonald The Princess and the Goblin

“I hate a man who swallows [food], affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters.”

Charles Lamb, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail December 20, 2002

“‘There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.’”

C.S. Lewis, quoted by Douglas Jackson in Gilbert! magazine January-February 2002

“When I was 17, I read a quote somewhere that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And when the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

Steve Jobs’ June 122005 commencement address at Stanford University, reprinted in National Post June 30, 2005