At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men's sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.
-
-
Blaise Pascal on the Past, the Future, and the Present
“We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.”
-
T.S. Eliot on Asphalt and Golf Balls
“Here were decent godless people: / Their only monument the asphalt road / And a thousand lost golf balls.”
-
Sir Richard Livingston on Education for a World Adrift
Their education did little to help them. It was like a half-assembled motorcar; most of the parts were there, but they were not put together. Reformers wished to base it on science and technology, or on sociology and economics, whose importance they saw; if they had had their way, they would have produced a good chassis, but overlooked the need of an engine not to speak of a driver who knew where to go. The real problem lay deeper than science or sociology or politics: it was spiritual.
-
Nanny Ogg on Being an Old Woman
It was central to Nanny Ogg's soul that she never considered herself an old woman, while of course availing herself of every advantage that other people's perceptions of her as such would bring.