James Gould Cozzens (TJatU) on subtleties of workplace politics:

"Four years' service had given him his place in the squabbles and schemings and jealousies and long-holding of grudges that made up so much of the life and world of the school office and the faculty room. Though no longer present, Sam Field would not be quietly released from their talk and thought. In the struggle about to be joined, the coming together in opposition about who was to blame and who would have to pay, they would expose Sam Field anew at every meeting, and retry the case every day for weeks, while his friends hated him for putting them at the disadvantage of having been his friends, and his enemies gloated quietly together, telling each other again and again that they had told each other so."

James Gould Cozzens on impulsiveness and the fateful role it can play: 

"Could he say that confronted by a certain situation he had taken on principle certain steps? He had in fact acted on impulse, in a mood or state of mind in which instead of doing what he really meant to do, he did what he meant to avoid, refused what he really wanted, and with unprovoked pique, out of hand, in a minute, came to new and definite decisions that might--more than might, must!--affect his whole life." 

I know less than nothing about Orthodox iconography, but this passage from Nikolai Levsky's story The Sealed Angel gives a vivid impression of the aesthetic and spiritual delight to be found therein, most especially for Christians, I imagine:

"Luka Kirlovich passionately loved holy icons, and, my dear sirs, he owned the most wonderful icons, of the most artful workmanship, ancient, either real Greek, or of the first Novgorod or Stroganov icon painters. Icon after icon shone not so much by their casings as by the keenness and fluency of their marvelous artistry, I've never seen such loftiness anywhere since! ...You look at Our Lady, how the inanimate trees bow down before her purity, and your heart melts and trembles; you look at the angel...joy! This angel was truly something indescribable. His face--I can see it now--is most brightly divine and so swiftly succoring ; his gaze is tender; his hair is tied with a fine ribbon, its ends curling around his ears, a sign of his hearing everything from everywhere; his robe is shining, all spangled with gold; his armor is feathery, his shoulders are girded; on his chest the face of the infant Emmanuel; in his right hand a cross, in his left a flaming sword. Wondrous! Wondrous!..."

"It is, indeed, a remarkable fact that sufferings and hardships do not, as a rule, abate the love of life; they seem, on the contrary, usually to give it a keener zest. The sovereign source of melancholy is repletion. Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void."

--William James, The Will to Believe

"Inside every revolutionary there is a policeman."

--Gustave Flaubert

James Gould Cozzens, in The Just and The Unjust, on long-standing partisan monopolies. (Obviously, the name of the party could be switched out for another depending on a given local situation.):

"The county had been Republican for almost a generation. This mean that the Republicans were entrenched in power; they had all the jobs. Having all the jobs meant having also an increasing monopoly of the ambitious, able and experienced men. Ambitious men could see the situation; able men could not expect to get anywhere with the Democrats; and as for experience, a Democrat could never be elected, and so could never get any experience."

I normally don't include political links, but this is a culturally relevant post, with historical resonances. Ross Douthat on the PC hullabaloo:

"In a landscape in which older moral systems have been rejected, collapsed or simply been forgotten, moral clarity alone can be a pretty significant advantage. In the kingdom of the bland, the zealot has a lot of material to work with."

Terry Teachout, on why being nutso about Art beats being dyspeptically preoccupied by ideas and politics, every time.

"...as I say, aesthetes have it over intellectuals in one important respect: You’ll rarely catch them hustling anyone off to the nearest guillotine. For all their frequent foolishness, their hands are stained with ink and paint, not blood."

"There's little point in writing if you can't annoy somebody." 

--Kingsley Amis

"Criminals might be victims of circumstance in the sense that few of them ever had a fair chance; but it was a mistake to forget that the only 'fair chance' they ever wanted was a chance for easy money."

--James Gould Cozzens, The Just and the Unjust

"The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are."

--Samuel Johnson