David

“Merlyn held up his hand. “Give him the humble earth-worm,” he said majestically. So the animals recited in unison: “The naturalist Darwin has pointed out that there are about 25,000 earth-worms in every field acre, that they turn over in England alone 320,000,000 tons of soil a year, and that they are to be found in almost every region of the world. In thirty years they will alter the whole earth’s surface to the depth of seven inches. ‘The earth without worms,’ says the immortal Gilbert White, ‘would soon become cold, hard-bound, void of fermentation, and consequently sterile.’​”
― T.H. White, The Book of Merlyn: The Conclusion to the Once and Future King

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

“What? Harmless! Is that all it’s got to say? Harmless! One word!’ Ford shrugged. ‘Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and only a limited amount of space in the book’s microprocessors,’ he said, ‘and no one knew much about the Earth, of course.’ ‘Well, for God’s sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit.’ ‘Oh yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it’s still an improvement.’ ‘And what does it say now?’ asked Arthur. ‘Mostly harmless,”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“Having always imagined myself in a fairly slim minority, I suddenly saw that I was in a vast company. Difference unites us. While each of these experiences can isolate those who are affected, together they compose an aggregate of millions whose struggles connect them profoundly. The exceptional is ubiquitous; to be entirely typical is the rare and lonely state.”
― Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity