“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.”

Ralph Ellison Invisible Man

“For everywhere, above and below, you will find nothing but the selfsame things; they fill the pages of all history, ancient, modern, and contemporary; and they fill our cities and homes today. There is no such thing as novelty; all is as trite as it is transitory.”

Marcus Aurelius Meditations VII.1

“Spouses stay with their mates with Alzheimer’s, not because there is any hope for pay back or even appreciation, but because of a keen sense of duty, and so on.”

Amitai Etzioni, “Libertarian Follies,” World and I, May 1995

“When people can stand up, they’re thinking of killing you. Whereas when they’re ill, there’s no doubt about it, they’re less dangerous.”

“Louis-Fernand Celine, doctor turned novelist” quoted by Florence King in National Review March 29, 1993

“If you cannot prevent your enemies from swallowing you whole, at least you must do what you can to prevent them from digesting you.”

“Rousseau’s famous charge to the Poles” quoted by George Weigel in Witness to Hope (saying that in World War II it “was tested as never before.”)

“The only real property possessed by theology and metaphysics at the present day is their character of universality, and when deprived of this motive for preference they will have for our successors only a historical interest.”

Auguste Comte Introduction to Positive Philosophy

“truthache”

Something a mirror can cause according to Walter Winchell, quoted in The New Republic November 5, 1990

“There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself.”

Montaigne, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen To Go