"Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair..."

“No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.”

“A man who is morally clean, other things being equal, has in every instance, greater agility, greater capacity, and greater endurance by far than the man who is not. While the latter is wasting his creative energies in useless pleasures, as well as in disease producing habits, the former is turning all of his creative energy into ability and genius, and the result is evident.”

“Those against same-sex marriage aren't thinking straight (or are they)?”

“The ultimate aim of the human mind, in all its efforts, is to become acquainted with Truth.”

Source : Eliza Wood Farnham (1864). “Woman and Her Era”, p.9

“I just want your body, Sheeba, I don't want your brains.”

“The secret of the mountain is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no "meaning," they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day.”

Source : Peter Matthiessen (2008). “The Snow Leopard”, p.234, Penguin

“Ingratitude's a weed of every clime, It thrives too fast at first, but fades in time.”

Source : Sir Samuel Garth (1800). “The Poetical Works of Sir Sam. Garth, M.D., with the Life of the Author. Cooke's Edition. [With Illustrations.]”, p.76

“Maybe freedom really is nothing left to lose. You had it once in childhood, when it was okay to climb a tree, to paint a crazy picture and wipe out on your bike, to get hurt. The spirit of risk gradually takes its leave. It follows the wild cries of joy and pain down the wind, through the hedgerow, growing ever fainter. What was that sound? A dog barking far off? That was our life calling to us, the one that was vigorous and undefended and curious.”