“When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.”

“It gets so tiring, this strong-picking-on-the-weak stuff. It was the story of my life -literally- and it seemed to be a big part of the outside world too. I was sick of it, sick of guys like these, stupid and bullying.”

“Cause we are sick and tired of hearing your song,
Telling us how you are gonna change right from wrong,
'Cause if you really want to hear our views,
You haven't done nothin.”

“Many Americans share the feeling that our society has forgotten how to mind its own business.”

“But as long as we know what comprises our vital interests and our long-range goals, we have nothing to fear from negotiations at the appropriate time, and nothing to gain by refusing to take part in them. At a time when a single clash could escalate overnight into a holocaust of mushroom clouds, a great power does not prove its firmness by leaving the task of exploring the other's intentions to sentries or those without full responsibility. Nor can ultimate weapons rightfully be employed, or the ultimate sacrifice rightfully demanded of our citizens, until every reasonable solution has been explored. "How many wars," Winston Churchill has written, "have been averted by patience and persisting good will! …. How many wars have been precipitated by firebrands!"”

“O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,
And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;
Before this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its heads o’ertax’d, its palsied hearts, was rife.”

“How difficult, how extremely difficult for the soul to sever itself from its body the world: from mountains, seas, cities, people. The soul is an octopus and these are its tentacles. … No force anywhere on earth is as imperialistic as the human soul. It occupies and is occupied in turn, but it always considers its empire too narrow. Suffocating, it desires to conquer the world in order to breathe freely.”

“This perpetual hurry of business and company ruins me in soul if not in body. More solitude and earlier hours!”

“One challenge of our adventure on earth is to rise above dead systems… wars, nations, destructions… to refuse to be a part of them, and express the highest selves we know how to be.”

“History does not tend to the better, Doc, it does not, it does not. We imagine so because events have produced our glorious selves. Think, however. Put aside the romantic legends and look at the facts. The average Frenchman in 1800 was no more unfree than the average Englishman. The French Empire could have brought Europe together, and could have been liberalized from within, and there might have been no World War I in which Western civilization cut its own throat. Because that’s what’s happened, you know. We’re still busy bleeding to death, but we haven’t far to go now.”