Michael Oakeshott (in Present, Future and Past) on an "encapsulated" past:

“...since we are concerned with what happened in respect of its reflection in what we are, we should perhaps include our genetic past: the organization of genes which distinguished that unknown great-grandfather which now appears in the colour of my eyes and the shape (and, in part, the skill) of my hands. What comes after may modify what went before, but it cannot expunge it. Layer upon layer; all a great and contingent mixture from which we cannot escape but to which what we are and what we do now is somehow a response.”

"Not to have the instinct to command implies a lack of the instinct to obey. The two aptitudes are but different facets of one jewel: the sense of order."

—Max Beerbohm, Servants

Fairfield Porter on—what else?—Art, or rather, having a certain artistic point of view:

"Wholeness is as close to you as yourself and your immediate surroundings. You need not pursue it, you have only to accept it. What is real and what is alive is concrete and singular. In a statement of esthetic belief  Pasternak said, "'Poetry is in the grass.'"

VN (in Pnin) on one of the inherent difficulties of absentmindedness:

"Because of a streak of dreaminess and a gentle abstraction in his nature, Victor in any qeue was always at its very end. He had long since grown used to this handicap, as one grows used to weak sight or a limp."

Max Beerbohm on a sort of political philosophy:

"Anarchistic? Yes; and I have no defence to offer, except the rather lame one that I am a Tory anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased—short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed."

Fairfield Porter on Revolutionists:

“It is..from the unemployed intellectuals that the Bolsheveki were drawn; in fact this is the class that contributes the membership of all revolutionary organizations of both right and left. The successful revolutionist is one who is able to force society to give him the place of command that society has taught him to believe he deserves.”

“Social consciousness devalues everything except revolutionary activity. It devalues itself, like those toys that destroy themselves. In saying that what is, is bad, it inhibits the artist's experience and causes him to fall into the cliches from previous styles. The artist knows everything and uses his eyes only to keep his hand from slipping."

JB on Revolution (FDtD):

“The cultural predicament after a revolution is how to reinstate community, how to live with those you have execrated and fought against with all imaginable cruelty.”

Jacques Barzun on Revolution (From Dawn to Decadence):

“Revolutions paradoxically being by promising freedom and then turn coercive and 'puritanical,' to save themselves from both discredit and reaction. Creating a purer life requires that people forget other aims; therefore public and private life must be regimented. That is why the theme applicable to revolution is Emancipation and not Freedom. Old shackles are thrown off, tossed high in the air, but come down again as moral duty well enforced.”

"Herman Gombiner considered himself to be among the select few privileged to see beyond the facade of phenomena. He had seen a blotter raise itself from the desk, slowly and unsteadily float toward the door, and once there, float gently down, as if suspended by an invisible string held by some unseen hand. The whole thing had been thoroughly senseless. No matter how much Herman thought about it, he was unable to figure out any reason for what had taken place. It had been one of those extraordinary happenings that cannot be explained by science, or religion, or folklore. Later, Herman had bent down and picked up the blotter, and placed it back on the desk, where it remained to this day, covered with papers, dusty, and dried out—an inanimate object that for one moment had somehow freed itself from physical laws."

—IB Singer, The Letter Writer

—St. Francis and the Skull, Francisco de Zubaran