. . . the human mind, as allotted by the Creator to certain of his creatures, is capable of receiving any impression it chooses, and holding it as a fixed conviction.  Other minds may gather a different and more rational conclusion. . . .  —Dr. John A. Wyeth

The dismaying sense of it, perhaps the one common denominator in the various feelings of several million men caught up in a war, of the steady, in the exact sense, preposterous, compulsion. . . .  —James Gould Cozzens

The love of God towards men and the intellectual love of the mind towards God are identical.  —Spinoza

I never see a pen but what I think of a snake.  —Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest

The task of the civilised intelligence is perpetual salvage. . . . If in making progress, you destroy beauty, it is not progress.  —William Gilmore Simms

Bidden or not bidden, God is present.  —Carl Jung

History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.   —Thomas Jefferson

Poets, when they are real men, are prophets, for there is a soul-instinct, which they represent, which is far more profound than any reason.   —William Gilmore Simms

Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.
—Robert Burns

The trouble is no one in this country of ours seems to learn anything from past mistakes.   —Taki Theodoracopulos

We live through time, that little piece of time that is yours, but that piece of time is not only   your own life, it is the summing-up of all the other lives that are simultaneous with yours.   It is, in other words, History, and what you are is an expression of History. . . .   —Robert Penn Warren

Publishing houses are not, as has been claimed, a refuge for rogues, thieves, and intellectual criminals who depend for their existence on their expertise in battening on the skills and talents of the miserably rewarded few who can do what the publishers are totally incapable of—string together a few words in a meaningful fashion.  Some publishing houses are run by people who are recognisably human.  —Alistair MacLean