“There is no way a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.”
G.K. Chesterton, regarding his fiancee, quoted by Robert More-Jumonville in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 # 5 (March 2001)
“‘Of course there might be a God. I just don’t know.’ You are either living as though He did, or living as though He didn’t. If you don’t know anything at all, then how did you choose?/ The psalmist famously wrote, ‘The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’’ Did he call the man a fool for not knowing God is real? Or for knowing God is real, but pretending to himself that he didn’t?/ Few people lose belief in God, and then do wrong. The more often traveled path is to do wrong, excuse it, then look for reasons to disbelieve in God.”
J. Budziszewski "Underground Thomist" email “Reading an Empty Book” March 24, 2019.
“Misfortune is a point of view. Your headache may feel good to an aspirin salesman.”
Tony Robbins Unlimited Power
“‘I’m not saying there is no God. I’m just not religious.’ How curious that the Lord of the Universe might exist, yet not be important enough to think about.”
J. Budziszewski “Underground Thomist” email “Reading an Empty Book” March 24, 2019
“But really, Marilla, one can’t stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?”
Anne in Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
“William James used to say that there was not much difference between one man and another but that the little difference there was was of great importance.”
Richard Hofstadter The American Political Tradition (author's 1967 Preface)
“happiness is an end and pleasure can only be a means.”
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News April 27, 1912 quoted in “Chesterton’s Mail Bag” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #8 (July-August 2005)
“Not then having learned the philosophy of yielding to disproportionate obstacles...”
Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail