Toccara

“The greater part of the world has, properly speaking, no history, because the despotism of Custom is complete. This is the case over the whole East. Custom is there, in all things, the final appeal; justice and right mean conformity to custom; the argument of custom no one, unless some tyrant intoxicated with power, thinks of resisting. And we see the result. Those nations must once have had originality; they did not start out of the ground populous, lettered, and versed in many of the arts of life; they made themselves all this, and were then the greatest and most powerful nations in the world. What are they now? The subjects or dependants of tribes whose forefathers wandered in the forests when theirs had magnificent palaces and gorgeous temples, but over whom custom exercised only a divided rule with liberty and progress.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Right Jo better be happy old maids than unhappy wives or unmaidenly girls running about to find husbands.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“In other words, or perhaps another thing, whatever I said it was never enough and always too much. Yes,”
― Samuel Beckett, Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable

“You don't know what you can accomplish if you never try.”
― Dennis K. Hausker, Echo Three Tango