David Toth

“A truly brave man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature—of what we call a capacious mind (Yoyū), which, far from being pressed or crowded, has always room for something more.”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido, The Soul Of Japan

“And here he was a little halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit of the quiet countryside, expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. It was an evil fate. But he had taken it on himself in his own sitting-room in the far-off spring of another year, so remote now that it was like a chapter in a story of the world's youth, when Trees of Silver and Gold were still in bloom. This was an evil choice. Which way he choose? And if both led to terror and death, what good lay in choice?”
― J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“The thing about rabbits, sir, is that everybody has one, I'd like to see you step up to the goat-class where I feel you belong. Frankly you look more like a goat man to me.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“When the world changes faster than species can adapt, many fall out. This is the case whether the agent drops from the sky in a fiery streak or drives to work in a Honda.”
― Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History