“The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government”

To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world, as it is man’s, into the world, as it is God’s.

Acquaintance I would have, but when it depends; not on number, but the choice of friends.

Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.

Come, my best Friends! my Books! and lead me on.

Build yourself a book-nest to forget the world without.

Happy insect! what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning’s gentle wine!

Our yesterday’s to-morrow now is gone, And still a new to-morrow does come on. We by to-morrow draw out all our store, Till the exhausted well can yield no more.

Who lets slip fortune, her shall never find: Occasion once past by, is bald behind.

Solitude can be used well by very few people. They who do must have a knowledge of the world to see the foolishness of it, and enough virtue to despise all the vanity.

Of all ills that one endures, hope is a cheap and universal cure.

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal Now does always last.

Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.

Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit, Or what is worse, be left by it? Why dost thou load thyself when thou ‘rt to fly, Oh, man! ordain’d to die?

Fill all the Glasses there; for why Should every Creature Drink but I? Why, Man of Morals, tell me why?

All this world’s noise appears to me a dull, ill-acted comedy!

Poets by Death are conquer’d but the wit Of poets triumphs over it.

The whites have the responsibility to put themselves at attention with the form they operate in with people of color and try to always lay out that pattern to connect with people and say, “I am conscious of my privileges and I am accounting for myself.”

And those families for generations have maintained themselves in positions of power. Latin America founded itself on everyone being equal, but in reality we aren’t.

The literary world is so full of pretension, and there’s such an enormous gap between how seriously poets take themselves and how widely they’re ignored by everybody else.

Train your mind to see in all people, what they do not see in themselves. Begin to treat every person you come in contact with as the most important person in the world. Look at them with new awareness.

I love Scotland and I speak about it a lot, so people think I’m desperate to go back. They just take it upon themselves to say I’m going back, but I’m not. I’d rather concentrate on becoming a citizen of the world.

All the things about ‘the ugly American’ that we worry about and which the Americans see in themselves, it’s all of that. This is a politics of egotistical display.

I might inspire somebody, but that person has to be motivated within themselves first. Look inside yourself, believe in yourself, put in the hard work, and your dreams will unfold.

No one wants to see someone talk who takes themselves too seriously.