That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.
—Willa Cather, 1918
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Quotes
The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.
—John Updike, 1963Diseases, at least many of them, are like human beings. They are born, they flourish, and they die.
—David Riesman, 1937Cows are among the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their young when deprived of them—and, in short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these quiet creatures.
—Thomas De Quincey, 1821What is outside my mind means nothing to it.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 170You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985Is there no way out of the mind?
—Sylvia Plath, 1962The money we have is the means to liberty; that which we pursue is the means to slavery.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, c. 1770A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?
—Ronald Reagan, 1965Are we not ourselves nature, nature without end?
—Stanisław Lem, 1961The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1640Seek not water, only show you are thirsty, / That water may spring up all around you.
—Rumi, c. 1260