P.S. Beckmann

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“But when the sun drops closer to the earth, the cold of the earth runs to it from the water and causes all green things to dry up. And because the sun has dropped closer to the earth, the days are short, and it is winter.”
― Hildegard of Bingen, Selected Writings

“Tell me how you wish me to deal with these enemies of yours, for they are no able to camp, and I will deliver them in your hands in whatever manner you wish.' Modern accounts invariably include the story of how dal Verme sent Hawkwood a fox in a cage, to say that he had the clever Englishman trapped. -Jacopo dal Verme to Giangaleazzo Visconti”
― William Caferro, John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy

“I conclude therefore that, fortune being changeful and mankind steadfast in their ways, so long as the two are in agreement men are successful, but unsuccessful when they fall out. For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince