“Every activity has its own specific goal. Pleasure very probably ensues in most cases when this goal is reached, but that is a different matter.”
I.A. Richards Principles of Literary Criticism
“How ludicrous and outlandish is astonishment at anything that happens in life.”
Marcus Aurelius Meditations
“For they [John Smith’s audience] did believe in the spirit of the devil which, as everyone knows, is in all of us.”
Walter Lippman The Public Philosophy
“how much human nature loves the knowledge of its existence, and how it shrinks from being deceived, will be sufficiently understood from this fact, that every man prefers to grieve in a sane mind, rather than to be glad in madness.”
St. Augustine City of God
“A person who never travels always praises his own mother’s cooking.”
A Baganda proverb “roughly translated” according to Philip Turner, who spent 10 years as a missionary in Uganda, in First Things June-July 2005.
“There is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom, some spark of friendship for human kind, some particle of the dove kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and serpent”.
David Hume, quoted in William Bennett The Book of Virtues.
“We must not provide against the loss of wealth by poverty, or of friends by refusing all acquaintance, or of children by having none, but by morality and reason.”
Plutarkhos, aka Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus Plutarch’s Lives Vol. I
“I have said that they were truly happy; and without strong affection, and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is Mercy, and whose great attribute is Benevolence to all things that breathe, true happiness can never be attained.”
Charles Dickens Oliver Twist