Riff

“fortes et strenuos etiam contra fortunam insistere, timidos et ignoros ad desperationem formidine properare - the brave and bold persist even against fortune; the timid and cowardly rush to despair through fear alone”
― Tacitus

“To her mind the Senate was a place where people went to recite speeches, and she naively assumed that the speeches were useful and had a purpose, but as they did not interest her she never went again. This is a very common conception of Congress; many Congressmen share it.”
― Henry Adams, Democracy, an American novel

“Trees, like people, struggle for existence, and an aged tree, like an aged person, has not only a striking appearance, but an interesting biography.”
― Enos A. Mills, The Story of a Thousand-year Pine

“I never learned to say shit before a lady. I don't believe in progress in quite the way you seem to. You believe in it more than Grandmother did. As for those purely cultural patterns of convention you think I ought to escape from, they happen to add up to civilization, and I'd rather be civilized than tribal or uncouth.”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose