“The modern artist, only too often, loses himself in seeking to find and fix himself; he imposes a fictitious self upon that unthinking real self which otherwise would be expressed freely. He has become an individualist, and ceased to be an individual. Nay, he has even become a madman in the most frightful and vivid meaning of the term. He has become conscious of his subconsciousness.”
G.K. Chesterton, “The Mirror,” in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton
“Remember: blue side up.”
Some “earthy words of wisdom” from a group of amateur pilots quoted by Michael Leo Donovan in Reader’s Digest Canadian Edition September 2005.
“This is a pleasant surprise, Archie. I would not have believed it. That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.”
Nero Wolfe to Archie Goodwin in Rex Stout Fer de Lance
“Yes, ‘hereafter’ was everything: without that prospect, all life would have been a nasty joke…”
The internal monologue of Eddie Cain in “Lex Talionis” in Russell Kirk Ancestral Shadows
Re a scene in Romeo and Juliet “That’s not ‘realistic,’ of course: in whatever real life may be, lovers don’t start cooing in sonnet form.”
Northrop Frye (I think in a book Frye on Shakespeare but my note to myself on the subject was cryptic)
“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”
Eric Hoffer, quoted on “Preacher’s Illustrative Nuggets” (www.hound-dog-media.com/2014/01/gamblers-fools-and-egotists-59-still_31.html)
“There is a proof that common sense and the higher mysteries lie very close together. It is the fact that they are frequently and even continually absent simultaneously from the same person.”
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News April 2, 1904, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 # 6 4-5/05