The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other mens labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable things, called by the same nameliberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable namesliberty and tyranny.

Our true ancestry is the emergent creativity of the universe. Our forebears were the great inventors who 'learned' how to coalesce hydrogen and helium into stars, to form planets, to sustain life first from mineral nutrients in the sea and later to capture delicious photons, to exploit oxygen for energy rather than be exterminated by it, to diversify via sexual reproduction, to form social groups for greater security and protection of offspring. We are the beneficiaries (and, admittedly, also the victims) of this narrative of emergence. Our 'companions'

John Brewer, The Great Story

All paths are present, always... and we can but choose among them.

Jacqueline Carey

WHEN I am dead and over me bright April Shakes out her rain-drenched hair, Though you should lean above me broken-hearted, I shall not care. I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful When rain bends down the bough; And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted Than you are now.

Sarah Teasedale

she had no resources for solitude

Jane Austen

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, / That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!

William Shakespeare

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution --such call I good books.

Henry David Thoreau

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom.

Clarence Darrow

The chain of wedlock is so heavy that it takes two to carry it - and sometimes three.

Heraclitus

There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.

Charles Baudelaire

A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half of the world.

George Dennison Prentice