“Most troubles only come because we go halfway to meet them.
The “Duc de Lévis” quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail April 26, 2004
“your fish is not fried fish till caught”
The Chorus in Aristophanes The Clouds
“A very honest atheist with whom I once debated made use of the expression, ‘Men have only been kept in slavery by the fear of hell.’ As I pointed out to him, if he had said that men had only been freed from slavery by the fear of hell, he would at least have been referring to an unquestionable historical fact.”
G.K. Chesterton in St. Francis of Assisi, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 # 6 (April/May 2001)
“Give your brain as much attention as you do your hair and you'll be a thousand times better off.”
Malcolm X (widely quoted online; I was first alerted to it in a paraphrase in the Ottawa Citizen March 7, 1999)
“Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.”
Søren Kierkegaard, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen To Go
“It is often observed that it is human nature to dislike those whom we have injured…”
David Frum Dead Right
“Napoleon had everything men usually crave – glory, power, riches – yet he said at St Helena: ‘I have never known six happy days in my life’; while Helen Keller – blind, deaf, dumb – declared, ‘I have found life so beautiful.’ If half a century of living has taught me anything at all, it has taught me that ‘Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.’”
Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
“No one of his Cabinet really understood Lincoln. He was constantly scandalizing them by his calm disregard of convention, and his seemingly prodigal waste of time. The friends and advisers of Jesus were similarly shocked. How could any one with such important business allow himself to be so casually interrupted! One of the surest marks of greatness, of course, is accessibility and the appearance of having an unstinted allowance of time. ‘Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality,’ says Stevenson. The disciples were extremely busy, Judas most of all.”
Bruce Barton The Man Nobody Knows