"man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief, and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another." /joseph addison
"of what use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave, and cannot find a focal distance within the actual horizon of human life? of what use, if the brain is too cold or too hot, and the man does not care enough for results, to stimulate him to experiment, and hold him up in it? or if the web is too finely woven, too irritable by pleasure and pain, so that life stagnates from too much reception, without due outlet?" /r.w. emerson
"only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything." /willa cather
"friendship is constant in all other things, save in the office and affairs of love: therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues; let every eye negotiate for itself, and trust no agent."
"but we, o blockhead, with dogged spite and armored love shall force those deaf dark powers to grow ears and hear us! i know that god is earless, eyeless, and heartless too, a brainless dragon worm that crawls on earth and hopes in anguish and then in secret that we'll give him soul, for then he, too, may sprout ears, eyes, to match his growth, but god is clay in my ten fingers, and I mould him!"
"i don't want to be called 'the greatest' or 'one of the greatest.' let other guys claim to be the best. i just want to be known as a clown because to me, that's the height of my profession. it means you can do everything — sing, dance and, above all, make people laugh." /red skelton
"what is chiefly needed is skill rather than machinery. the flight of the buzzard and similar sailors is a convincing demonstration of the value of skill and the partial needlessness of motors. it is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill. this i conceive to be fortunate, for man, by reason of his greater intellect, can more reasonably hope to equal birds in knowledge than to equal nature in the perfection of her machinery." /wilbur wright
"the pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. he who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of god prevail. he who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light." /matthew arnold
"as sweet and musical as bright apollo's lute, strung with his hair; and when love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony."
"how many loved your moments of glad grace, and loved your beauty with love false or true, but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face."
"but fair the exil'd palm-tree grew midst foliage of no kindred hue; through the laburnum’s dropping gold rose the light shaft of orient mould, and europe’s violets, faintly sweet, purpled the mossbeds at its feet."
"in the heart, in the heart, where the truth shows where the mind knows where the love grows that is where, that is where, i complete you it's the only place i can meet you"
"there is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore, there is society, where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar: i love not man the less, but nature more."
"there will be time, there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; there will be time to murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands, that lift and drop a question on your plate; time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of a toast and tea."
"this is what i see, and what troubles me. i look on all sides, and everywhere i see nothing but obscurity. nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet." /blaise pascal
"if you were to secretly ask the most praised hip-hop producers, if given a top three, who they fear the most, dilla’s name would chart on everyone’s list, hands down." /?uestlove
"creativity and innovation always builds on the past. the past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past. ours is less and less a free society."
"i have had a 'call' to literature, of a low order--i.e. humorous. it is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit...seriously scribbling to excite the laughter of god's creatures." /mark twain
"i began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world, upon whose spinning wheel we must all learn to ride, or fall into the sluiceways of oblivion and despair. that which made me succeed with the bicycle was precisely what had gained me a measure of success in life -- it was the hardihood of spirit that led me to begin, the persistence of will that held me to my task, and the patience that was willing to begin again when the last stroke had failed. and so i found high moral uses in the bicycle and can commend it as a teacher without pulpit or creed. she who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain the mastery of life." /frances e. willard
"it's good to be just plain happy; it's a little better to know that you're happy; but to understand that you're happy and to know why and how...and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss." /henry miller
"never let the future disturb you. you will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present." /marcus aurelius antoninus
"what thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross. what thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee what thou lov'st well is thy true heritage whose world, or mine or theirs or is it of none? first came the seen, then thus the palpable elysium, though it were in the halls of hell. what thou lovest well is thy true heritage."
"i figured out that my passion is not really for music. my passion is actually for people. so the exploration into different musics of different times has to do with trying to figure out who these people are, what this music represents and what context do we want to give it, and 'what does it mean to us right now?'" /yo-yo ma
"i think i should have no other mortal wants, if i could always have plenty of music. it seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. life seems to go on without effort, when i am filled with music." /george eliot
"how hard to realize that every camp of men or beasts has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! in such places standing alone on the mountaintop it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make--leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone--we all dwell in a house of one room--the world with the firmament for its roof--and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track." /john muir
"and pomp, and feast, and revelry, with mask, and antique pageantry, such sights as youthful poets dream on summer eves by haunted stream. then to the well-trod stage anon, if jonson's learned sock be on, or sweetest shakespeare, fancy's child, warble his native wood-notes wild, and ever, against eating cares, lap me in soft lydian airs, married to immortal verse such as the meeting soul may pierce, in notes with many a winding bout of linked sweetness long drawn out."
"i do not see why i should e'er turn back, or those should not set forth upon my track to overtake me, who should miss me here and long to know if still i held them dear. they would not find me changed from him they knew-- only more sure of all i thought was true."
"when i am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me; plant thou no roses at my head, nor shady cypress tree. be the green grass above me with showers and dewdrops wet; and if thou wilt, remember and if thou wilt, forget."
"we are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams, wandering by lone sea breakers, and sitting by desolate streams; world-losers and world-forsakers, on whom the pale moon gleams: yet we are the movers and shakers of the world forever, it seems."
