Noelle

“[Politics] is the seedbed of social enmity, evil suspicions, shameless lies, morbid ambitions, and disrespect for the individual. Name anything bad in man, and it is precisely in the soil of political struggle that it grows with abundance.”
― Gorky

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters

“For one can live in friendship
With verses and with cards, with Plato and with wine,
And hide beneath the gentle cover of our playful pranks
A noble heart and mind.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“We are now told, indeed, by the learned doctors of the nullification school, that color operates as a forfeiture of the rights of human nature; that a dark skin turns a man into a chattel; that crispy hair transforms a human being into a four-footed beast. The master-priest informs you, that slavery is consecrated and sanctified by the Holy Scriptures and of the old and new Testament. . . My countrymen! These are the tenants of the modern nullification school. Can you wonder that they shrink from the light of free discussion? That they skulk from the grasp of freedom and truth?”
― John Quincy Adams