Clergyman's

Why hadn't that been part of his stupid lifelong redemption program: Do what my wife asks immediately so she doesn't feel like a nag.
— Liane Moriarty

I revered our theology, and aspired as much as any one to reach heaven: but being given assuredly to understand that the way is not less open to the most ignorant than to the most learned, and that the revealed truths which lead to heaven are above our comprehension, I did not presume to subject them to the impotency of my reason; and I thought that in order competently to undertake their examination, there was need of some special help from heaven, and of being more than man.
— René Descartes

The international monetary system is the glue that binds national economies together.
- Barry Eichengreen

You are an Englishman, and have subsequently drawn the greatest prize in the lottery of life.
- Cecil Rhodes

Years later, as a professor, Martin would try to find the words to articulate the power of togetherness in a world where togetherness had been corrupted -- and to explore the effect of the music, the surprising lengths the people had gone to to hear it and to play it, as evidence that music, and art in general, are basic requirements of the human soul. Not a luxury but a compulsion. He will think of it every time he goes to a museum or a concert or a play with a long line of people waiting to get inside.
— Jessica Shattuck

When someone's success makes you as happy as if it were your own, you know you've found someone worth holding on to.
— Charlotte Eriksson

DiLorenzo thinks that it is a reflection on Lincoln's anti-slavery character that he supported the Fugitive Slave Act. But the Fugitive Slave Clause is in the Constitution, and Lincoln thought that any refusal to implement the right clearly defined in the Constitution would justify secession. You can't pick and choose which parts of the Constitution you like. Once you do that, then the Constitution is simply, as Jefferson said once, ""a blank sheet of paper."" Jefferson said that when he was contemplating purchasing Louisiana. And having said that by purchasing it he would make the Constitution a blank sheet of paper, he went ahead and purchased Louisiana.
- Harry V. Jaffa

The search for the sense of humour is as fruitless and as enduring as the hunt for the unicorn; the really wise man knows that the unicorn, being no reality but a life-enhancing myth, must never be hunted, and may only be glimpsed by the well-disposed and the lucky; it cannot be captured, and it is encountered only by indirection.
- Robertson Davies