“For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom.”
Babbitt (1922), Ch. 9
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Sinclair Lewis 136
American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright 1885–1951Related quotes

“Hannibal, as he had mighty virtues, so had he many vices; he had two distinct persons in him.”
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Democritus Junior to the Reader
Source: The Rag and Bone Shop (2000), p. 149
Source: Corridors (1982), p. 145 in The Nebula Awards 18 edited by Robert Silverberg

“He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.”
Original text: Qui cherche dans la liberté autre chose qu'elle-même est fait pour servir.
Variant translation: The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
Old Regime (1856), p. 204 http://books.google.com/books?id=N50aibeL8BAC&pg=PA204&vq=%22He+who+seeks+freedom%22&source=gbs_search_r&cad=1_1
1850s and later

Speech to the Western Society of Engineers (18 September 1901); published in the Journal of the Western Society of Engineers (December 1901); republished with revisions by the author for the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (1902)
Context: Herr Otto Lilienthal seems to have been the first man who really comprehended that balancing was the first instead of the last of the great problems in connection with human flight. He began where others left off, and thus saved the many thousands of dollars that it had theretofore been customary to spend in building and fitting expensive engines to machines which were uncontrollable when tried. He built a pair of wings of a size suitable to sustain his own weight, and made use of gravity as his motor. This motor not only cost him nothing to begin with, but it required no expensive fuel while in operation, and never had to be sent to the shop for repairs. It had one serious drawback, however, in that it always insisted on fixing the conditions under which it would work. These were, that the man should first betake himself and machine to the top of a hill and fly with a downward as well as a forward motion. Unless these conditions were complied with, gravity served no better than a balky horse — it would not work at all...
We figured that Lilienthal in five years of time had spent only about five hours in actual gliding through the air. The wonder was not that he had done so little, but that he had accomplished so much. It would not be considered at all safe for a bicycle rider to attempt to ride through a crowded city street after only five hours’ practice, spread out in bits of ten seconds each over a period of five years; yet Lilienthal with this brief practice was remarkably successful in meeting the fluctuations and eddies of wind gusts. We thought that if some method could be found by which it would be possible to practice by the hour instead of by the second there would be hope of advancing the solution of a very difficult problem.

His wife, Sairaa in "Slumdog Composer Competes for Oscars".
The Pageant of Life (1964), On Planning for a Better World