Steven

“That which issues from the heart alone,
Will bend the hearts of others to your own.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“... for when a man's spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offenses, but never resentful of great ones.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

“What Machine is it that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro' another Day,- another Year,- as thro' an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight...we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,- we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop...gather'd dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver...no Horses,...only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity...”
― Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

“Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”
― Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams Volume 1