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"

By the banks of old Poughkeepsie
My love swam with me
Nature’s tender bones are breathing
Lungs, each breaths, each breathes and

Have you felt it?
Have you?
I’ve felt it too
And so have you

"

— Devendra Banhart, “Poughkeepsie”

"His soul was fattening and congealing into a gross grease, plunging ever deeper in its dull fear into a sombre threatening dusk, while the body that was his stood, listless and dishonoured, gazing out of darkened eyes, helpless, perturbed, and human for a bovine god to stare upon."

— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!"

— Jack Kerouac, On the Road

"He struggled with himself, too. I saw it — I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself."

— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

"Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking—had he the gold? or the gold him?"

— John Ruskin, Unto This Last

"Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised."

— John Kenneth Galbraith

"You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do no bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear."

— Victor Hugo

"If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers."

— Abraham Lincoln

"To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves."

— Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954)

"American constitutionalism is not a theory to be debated or a model to be debated—let alone imposed—but a reserve of experience, exemplary of good or ill; a reserve that can be drawn on when needed; intermittently, selectively, and with emphases that are shaped differently by the distinctive problems of different societies in different modes and at different stages of transformation."

— Bernard Bailyn