G.K. Chesterton admired the furrows in a plowed field, made by patient men who “had no notion of giving great sweeps and swirls to the eye”:

Those cataracts of cloven earth; they were done by the grace of God. I had always rejoiced in them; but I had never found any reason for my joy. There are some very clever people who cannot enjoy the joy unless they understand it. There are other and even cleverer people who say that they lose the joy the moment they do understand it.

(From Alarms and Discursions, 1911.)

“All the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals the remedy of books.” — Richard de Bury

“We speak of a manly man, but not of a whaley whale. If you wanted to dissuade a man from drinking his tenth whisky, you would slap him on the back and say, ‘Be a man.’ No one who wished to dissuade a crocodile from eating his tenth explorer would slap it on the back and say, ‘Be a crocodile.'”

— G.K. Chesterton, The Religious Doubts of Democracy, 1903

“We read often with as much talent as we write.” — Emerson

“To believe entails no desire to know; everybody reads the Bible, but who reads Flavius Josephus?” — Arthur Koestler

“People will tell you that science, philosophy, and religion have nowadays all come together. So they have in a sense … they have come together as three people may come together at a funeral. The funeral is that of Dead Certainty.” — Stephen Leacock