William Thomas

“When the winds arrive and leaves fall to coat the forest floor, youth recedes and you come to the horizon of your life. You will then plan the remainder of life and the route to take. Then will appear the consequences of your past actions, so choose those actions well.”
― Leonide Martin, The Controversial Mayan Queen: Sak K'uk of Palenque

“And it is plain enough, not from this instance only, but from many everywhere, that freedom is an excellent thing since even the Athenians, who, while they continued under the rule of tyrants, were not a whit more valiant than any of their neighbors, no sooner shook off the yoke than they became decidedly the first of all. These things show that, while undergoing oppression, they let themselves be beaten, since then they worked for a master; but so soon as they got their freedom, each man was eager to do the best he could for himself.2 Despite Herodotus’s”
― Jim Lacey, The First Clash: The Miraculous Greek Victory at Marathon and Its Impact on Western Civilization

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“In the same way now, since this reasoning
seems generally too bitter for those men
who have not tried it and the common crowd
shrinks back in fear, I wanted to explain
my argument to you in these verses,
sweet-spoken Pierian song, as if I were
sprinkling it with poetry’s sweet honey,
if, with such a method, I could perhaps
get your attention on my verse, until
you perceive the entire nature of things—------1310
how it is shaped and what its structure is.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things