“His great holy books, which he does not know. They are so holy that he does not dare to open them.”

Cardinal Monterisi in the footsteps of Saint Paul http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2011/02/18/february_18,_2011/en1-462779 (12 February 2011)

Source: The Book of Pastoral Rule, p.32

Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: The Little Man does not know that he is little, and he is afraid of knowing it. He covers up his smallness and narrowness with illusions of strength and greatness, of others' strength and greatness. He is proud of his great generals but not proud of himself. He admires thought which he did not have and not the thought he did have. He believes in things all the more thoroughly the less he comprehends them, and does not believe in the correctness of those ideas which he comprehends most easily.

Gautama Buddha, as quoted in the Dhammapada.
Misattributed

"Talk to an Art-Union (A Brooklyn fragment)" http://www.aol.bartleby.com/229/4011.html (1839); later delivered as a lecture at the Brooklyn Art Union (31 March 1851) and printed in the Brooklyn Daily Advertizer (3 April 1851)
Context: It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess. Who would not mourn that an ample palace, of surpassingly graceful architecture, fill’d with luxuries, and embellish’d with fine pictures and sculpture, should stand cold and still and vacant, and never be known or enjoy’d by its owner? Would such a fact as this cause your sadness? Then be sad. For there is a palace, to which the courts of the most sumptuous kings are but a frivolous patch, and, though it is always waiting for them, not one of its owners ever enters there with any genuine sense of its grandeur and glory.
I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty.

Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: My intellect tells me: "Tell the truth at any cost." The Little Man in me says: "It is stupid to expose oneself to the little man, to put oneself at his mercy. The Little Man does not want to hear the truth about himself. He does not want the great responsibility which is his. He wants to remain a Little Man. He wants to remain a Little Man, or wants to become a little great man. He wants to become rich, or a party leader, or commander of a legion, or secretary of the society for the abolition of vice. But he does not want to assume responsibility for his work..."

The Austin Road Trip http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/date/the_austin_road_trip.phtml#281,
The Tucker Max Stories

Popular Fallacies: XI, That We Must Not Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

Source: In full: Al-Qaeda statement http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1590350.stm (10th October, 2001)