Paul Blessing

“«Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera
(credo equidem), vivos ducent de marmore vultus,
orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus
describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent:
tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento
(hae tibi erunt artes), pacisque imponere morem,
parcere subiectis et debellare superbos»

"Others will hammer out more gently breathing bronzes, I believe so truly they will draw living expressions from marble, they will plead causes better and they will map with a compass the movements of the sky and will tell of rising stars: You, oh Roman, remember to rule the nations with authority (these will be your arts), and to impose a rule of peace, to spare the vanquished and to eradicate the arrogant”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“It was in the reign of George II. that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled ; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. written by himself

“You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
― Graham Greene, The Third Man

“I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest