WIST

Once we had wooden chalices and golden priests, now we have golden chalices and wooden priests.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist and poet
“The Preacher,” Lectures and Biographical Sketches (1883)

As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it.

Martin Van Buren (1782-1862) US President, 1837-41
(Attributed)

We use ideas merely to justify our evil, and speech merely to conceal our ideas.

Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Le Chapon et al Poularde, ch. 14 (1766)

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one’s obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

John Updike (1932-2009) American writer
In Studies in J. D. Salinger : Reviews, Essays, and Critiques of The Catcher in the Rye and other Fiction, ed. M. Laser and N. Fruman (1963)
On J. D. Saliger, from a review of Salinger's Franny and Zooey.

In our complex industrial civilization of today the peace of righteousness and justice, the only kind of peace worth having, is at least as necessary in the industrial world as it is among nations. There is at least as much need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the world of labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism in international relationships.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) US President (1901-1909)
Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, Oslo (5 May 1910)
    (Source)