“We have a moral obligation to be interesting, for our gospel is loaded with life-and-death interest for people.”

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)
Context: The organic molecules found in the gas phase in the atmosphere of Titan by Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft include hydrogen cyanide, cyanoacetylene, butadiene. cyanogen, propylene, propane, acetylene, ethane, ethylene, Methane, likewise. And the principle constituent of the atmosphere, there as here, is molecular nitrogen. It is, I think, very interesting that we have a world in the outer solar system that is loaded with the stuff of life.

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

"Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money" (1919)

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1848/mar/01/treaty-of-adrianople-charges-against to the House of Commons (1 March 1848). <br class="br">1840s <br class="br">Context: I hold with respect to alliances, that England is a Power sufficiently strong, sufficiently powerful, to steer her own course, and not to tie herself as an unnecessary appendage to the policy of any other Government. I hold that the real policy of England—apart from questions which involve her own particular interests, political or commercial—is to be the champion of justice and right; pursuing that course with moderation and prudence, not becoming the Quixote of the world, but giving the weight of her moral sanction and support wherever she thinks that justice is, and wherever she thinks that wrong has been done... I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.... And if I might be allowed to express in one sentence the principle which I think ought to guide an English Minister, I would adopt the expression of Canning, and say that with every British Minister the interests of England ought to be the shibboleth of his policy.

Cassandra (1860)
Context: By mortifying vanity we do ourselves no good. It is the want of interest in our life which produces it; by filling up that want of interest in our life we can alone remedy it. And, did we even see this, how can we make the difference? How obtain the interest which society declares she does not want, and we cannot want?

The Elements of Moral Philosophy (McGraw-Hill, 1999), p. 95

1930s, Second inaugural address (1937)