Men do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest, and keeps incessantly whirling around, building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like silkworms, and is suffocated in it. A mouse in a pitch barrel...thinks it notices from a distance some sort of glimmer of imaginary light and truth; but while running toward it, it is crossed by so many difficulties and obstacles, and diverted by so many new quests, that it strays from the road, bewildered.

The love of domination and an uncontrolled lust of arbitrary power have prevailed among all nations and perhaps in proportion to the degrees of civilization.

Mercy Otis Warren

Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.

E. M. Forster

I don't dream songs. I'm more apt to write dreams down and then to be able to interpret them into a song. I also tend to get up and write prose in the morning from which will come songs.

Judy Collins

Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.

Aldous Huxley

It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.

William Ellery Channing

I've been on such a losing streak that if I had been around I would have taken General Custer and given points.

Joe E. Lewis

Society's dark hull drifts further and further away. It is this place - the place of our separation, our distinction - that much of his poetry occupies.

Tomas Transtromer

My mother told me that truth is like my skin, a beautiful, protective covering, and the things that people say or do can be easily changed or discarded. She told me truth comes from the heart.

Stewart Lewis

There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets

Samuel Johnson

Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.

Erich Fromm

Well, there's nothing more touching than putting a smile on a kid's face when you can.

Emma Roberts

I honestly don't know, but if America continues to refuse to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, I see a bleak future not only for American society, but for the world as a whole. This is a global problem that is not going away, and the United States is an obstacle to solving it.

Peter Singer