“But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.”

I won’t be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.

Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.

School was the unhappiest time of my life and the worst trick it ever played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible.

Give, do not lend; after death who will thank you?

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time – beautiful?

It is easy to sympathize at a distance,’ said an old gentleman with a beard. ‘I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear.

One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.

She had been so wicked that in all her life she had done only one good deed-given an onion to a beggar. So she went to hell. As she lay in torment she saw the onion, lowered down from heaven by an angel. She caught hold of it. He began to pull her up.

The historian records, but the novelist creates.

The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.

Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.

We seem to prefer a comfortable lie to the uncomfortable truth. We punish those who point out reality, and reward those who provide us with the comfort of illusion. Reality is fearsome .. but experience tells us that more fearsome yet is evading it.

The general public will almost always stand behind the traditionalists. In the public eye, architecture is about comfort, about shelter, about bricks and mortar.

America is a very seductive place in terms of lifestyle and comfort, but it wasn’t for me.

I think everyone is a case-by-case basis. Whatever the circumstances are that come with any individual, they exist and you have to make a determination as to what your comfort level is with that person and the characteristics that they bring.

This is how we must comport ourselves if we are to fulfill our Lord’s command in the Gospel of John (17:21), Ut unum sint, that all may be one.

There is no intrinsic worth in money but what is alterable with the times, and whether a guinea goes for twenty pounds or for a shilling, it is the labor of the poor and not the high and low value that is set on gold or silver, which all the comforts of life must arise from.

The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.

I can say that even in the midst of my most cynical comic stripping: Opus shone through with a bit of heart, anchoring the ugly proceedings with a comforting pull of emotion.