Orlando

“John,” she said, “does it make every one—unhappy when they study and learn lots of things?”

He paused and smiled. “I am afraid it does,” he said.

“And, John, are you glad you studied?”

“Yes,” came the answer, slowly but positively.

She watched the flickering lights upon the sea, and said thoughtfully, “I wish I was unhappy,—and—and,” putting both arms about his neck, “I think I am, a little, John.”
― W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk

“And there you are
on the shore,

fitful and thoughtful, trying
to attach them to an idea —
some news of your own life.
But the lilies

are slippery and wild—they are
devoid of meaning, they are
simply doing,
from the deepest

spurs of their being,
what they are impelled to do
every summer.
And so, dear sorrow, are you.”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Then, as the storm burst round him, he
rose slowly to his feet and turned his closed eyes toward the Sea.
And the world whistled in his ears.”
― W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk