You strike the match... why not be utterly changed to fire? To sacrifice the shadow and the mist of a brief life you never much liked?

The life we've been leading couldn't last forever. It's a wonder it lasted as long as it did.

Jack Vance

That politician who curries favor with the citizens and indulges them and fawns upon them and has a presentiment of their wishes, and is skillful in gratifying them, he is esteemed a great statesman.

Plato

The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.

Ambrose Bierce

I am a part of all that I have met.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

William Blake

I wish there were more true conversion, and then there would not be so much backsliding, and, for fear of suffering, living at ease, when there are so few to contend for Christ and His cause.

Donald Cargill

The question now is: Can we understand our stupidity? This is a test of intellect, not of character.

John King Fairbank

There is an old-fashioned distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident, which must have cost many a smile to the intending romancer who was keen about his work. It appears to me as little to the point as the equally celebrated distinction between the novel and the romance- to answer as little to any reality. There are bad novels and good novels, as there are bad pictures and good pictures; but that is the only distinction in which I see any meaning, and I can as little imagine speaking of a novel of character as I can imagine speaking of a picture of character. When one says picture, one says of character, when one says novel, one says of incident, and the terms may be transposed. What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? What is a picture or a novel that is not of character? What else do we seek in it and find in it?

Henry James, essay The Art of Fi

Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them, and know it, but do not dare yet to confess it to themselves.

William Graham Sumner

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them

George Orwell

Revolutions are the only way we can evolve coincidentally. Otherwise we'll be held back while the people we need to revolt against do.

James Dye

He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have been sacrificed to produce her.

Edith Wharton