“The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive.”
G.K. Chesterton as a standalone quotation in illustration, without further attribution, in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2022)
“She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say ‘when.’”
P.G. Wodehouse quoted by Joseph Bottum in First Things October 2005 # 156
“Since life passes, whether sweet or bitter,/ Since the soul must pass the lips. Whether in Nishpur or in Balkh,/ Drink wine, for after you and I are gone many a moon/ Will pass from old to new, from new to old.”
Omar Khayyam, cited in Sadegh Hedayat’s deeply disturbed novel The Blind Owl
“‘The history of the world is but the biography of great men,’ wrote Carlisle in 1841. ‘There is properly no history,’ echoed Emerson that same year, ‘only biography.’”
The Beaver February-March 1998
“Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.”
The Duke of Wellington according to AZ Quotes [https://www.azquotes.com/author/15482-Duke_of_Wellington]
In my latest Epoch Times column I argue that trust is decaying fast in our society, because trustworthiness is succumbing to self-actualization, with dangerous consequences from politics to concerts.
“Those who fail in life are however very apt to assume a tone of injured innocence, and conclude too hastily that everybody excepting themselves has had a hand in their personal misfortunes…. Dr. Johnson, who came up to London with a single guinea in his pocket, and who once accurately described himself in his signature to a letter addressed to a noble lord, as IMPRANSUS, or Dinnerless, has honestly said, ‘All the complaints which are made of the world are unjust; I never knew a man of merit neglected; it was generally by his own fault that he failed of success.’”
Samuel Smiles Self-Help
“It was big. It tried to have a go at my feet. I threw my diving belt. He came back and bit my diving belt and then he let go. After that he came back one more time.”
Swedish diver Helena Nevalainen, who along with four others fought off Komodo dragons while stranded on a remote Indonesian island for more than a day, quoted in National Post June 9, 2008.