“the beasts of the wood themselves, which have no human reason or soul and that know so much more than we.”

Lord Dunsany

“‘I’m never an optimist, but I’m always hopeful.’”

Tom Flanagan in British Columbia Report May 27, 2002 (specifically regarding the then-current Canadian political scene but I commend this attitude in almost all situations)

"There is an alliance between religion and real fun, of which the modern thinkers have never got the key.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Jan. 11, 1908, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 6 #3 (Dec. 2002)

“The inner courtyard boasted a fountain, a stretch of lawn and some comparatively unobjectionable early baroque cloisters.”

Hans Hellmut Kirst The Night of the Generals [and credit translator J. Maxwell Brownjohn for rendering that "damning with faint praise" insult so well]