“The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive.”
G.K. Chesterton as a standalone quotation in illustration, without further attribution, in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2022)
“Since life passes, whether sweet or bitter,/ Since the soul must pass the lips. Whether in Nishpur or in Balkh,/ Drink wine, for after you and I are gone many a moon/ Will pass from old to new, from new to old.”
Omar Khayyam, cited in Sadegh Hedayat’s deeply disturbed novel The Blind Owl
“Those who fail in life are however very apt to assume a tone of injured innocence, and conclude too hastily that everybody excepting themselves has had a hand in their personal misfortunes…. Dr. Johnson, who came up to London with a single guinea in his pocket, and who once accurately described himself in his signature to a letter addressed to a noble lord, as IMPRANSUS, or Dinnerless, has honestly said, ‘All the complaints which are made of the world are unjust; I never knew a man of merit neglected; it was generally by his own fault that he failed of success.’”
Samuel Smiles Self-Help
“It was big. It tried to have a go at my feet. I threw my diving belt. He came back and bit my diving belt and then he let go. After that he came back one more time.”
Swedish diver Helena Nevalainen, who along with four others fought off Komodo dragons while stranded on a remote Indonesian island for more than a day, quoted in National Post June 9, 2008.
“No Catholic thinks he is a good Catholic; or he would by that thought become a bad Catholic. I for one am not even tempted to any illusion in that matter; I fear that very often, when I have got up early to go to Mass, I have said with a groan, Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, which, I may explain to the Moslem, is not a quotation from the Mass. But the critic here in question does not say, in the grand Lucretian manner, ‘Religion alone can persuade men to such evils.’”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly August 24, 1933, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2022)
“Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.”
Tom Lehrer, quoted as standalone “WORDS OF WISDOM” in Epoch Times email teaser February 26, 2023
“It does not very much matter what we think of one individual lady known as Miss Marie Corelli.”
G.K. Chesterton “Why Books Become Popular” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (9-10/22) [as an editor’s note explained, this contemporary of GKC’s was the best-selling author of her day, outselling Kipling, Wells, and Conan Doyle combined... but has anyone heard of her today? I certainly hadn’t.]
“The French expression qui s’excuse s’accuse...”
John O’Sullivan in National Review May 1, 1995