“The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.”

— Joseph Heller , book Catch-22

Catch-22 (1961)

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Joseph Heller 132

American author 1923–1999

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“you'll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut”

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Source: I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! (1978)

“An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth. Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Original quote:
For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid. I was doing it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever.
The Extraordinary Cabman, one of many essays collected in Tremendous Trifles (1909)
Misattributed

“Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961)

“That no matter what i did, I would always be missing something else. And the only way to live, the only way to be happy, was to make sure the things I didn't miss meant more to me than the things I missed.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: How They Met, and Other Stories

“But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid.”

G. K. Chesterton book Tremendous Trifles

Tremendous Trifles (1909)
Context: For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid. I was doing it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever.

“Ought charges of materialism to be brought against him who points out that regularity?”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
Context: I have always comprehended with difficulty... how persons pre-occupied doubtless by ideas, have seen any tendency to materialism in exposition of a series of facts deduced from documents. In giving to my work the title of Physics, I have had no other aim than to collect, in uniform order, the phenomena affecting man, nearly as physical science brings together the phenomena appertaining to the material world. If certain facts present themselves with an alarming regularity, to whom is blame to be ascribed? Ought charges of materialism to be brought against him who points out that regularity?