Professor Shaftenberg

“Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Poems and Translations

“It is in the lawful power of no human being to force me to believe or accept what he says or thinks; and however little regard I have for these human reveries, however much I flout them, there is no person on earth who can pretend to the right to censure or punish me therefor. Into what chasm of errors or foolishness would we not tumble were all men blindly to adhere to what it suited some other men to establish! And through what incredible injustice will you call moral that which emanates from you; immoral that which I uphold? To what arbitration shall we apply in order to find out upon which side right and reason lie?”
― Marquis de Sade, Juliette