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Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day
“When I was young I used to be astonished at how little progress was made in the world — all those fine words, all those noble talkative men and women, those plans, those cornerstones, those constitutions drawn up for ideal republics. They don’t make a dent on the average man or woman.”
But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid.
G. K. Chesterton • The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books]
But, it is well known, what strikes the capricious mind of the poet is not always what affects the mass of readers. Now, while admiring, as others doubtless will admire, the details we have to relate, our main preoccupation concerned a matter to which no one before ourselves had given a thought. D'Artagnan
Alexandre Dumas • The Three Musketeers
Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day
“There was always hope that in talk, talk, talk he could alter the past, conjure the future, and impose an estimable image of himself upon the present.”
A child, not knowing what is extraordinary and what commonplace, usually lights midway between the two, finds interest in incidents adults consider beneath notice and calmly accepts the most improbable occurrences.
Gene Wolfe • The Fifth Head of Cerberus: Three Novellas
For the perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them;
G. K. Chesterton • The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books]
But I do say, to start with, “What can we do for posterity, except deal fairly with our contemporaries?” Unless a man love his wife whom he has seen, how shall he love his child whom he has not seen?
G. K. Chesterton • The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books]
Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day
“Explanations are for people who carry dull minds through dull lives”
“Why are idealists such ninnies?
