Aneece

“For getting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity there is nothing like pouring out on a mind a good amount of subjects in which it feels no interest.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“In treading upon the ashes of dead men in Italy, Egypt - on the banks of the Bosphorus, one almost despairs to think how idle are the dreams and toils of this life, and were it not for the intellectual pleasure of knowing and learning, one would almost be damaged by travel in these historic lands.”
― William T. Sherman

“Whose fingers string the stalactite-
Who counts the Wampum of the night”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“The day after the British entered the war Henry James wrote a friend:

The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness... is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words.”
― Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory