Lance Barclay

“Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man with his mouth.”
― Mark Twain

“Steadfast Seas and Mountains

The lofty mountains and the seas,
Being mountains, being seas,
Both exist and are real.
But frail as flowers are the lives of men,
Passing phantoms of this world.”
― Reiko Chiba, Hiroshige's Tokaido in Prints and Poetry

“Even in adversity, nobility shines through, when a man endures repeated and severe misfortune with patience, not owing to insensibility but from generosity and greatness of soul.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics