“I am a very simple person. In spite of all that has happened to me, I have tried to remain the simple person I started out.”

The Cultivation of Conspiracy (1998)
Context: The impending loss of spirit, of soul, of what I call atmosphere, could go unnoticed.
Only persons who face one another in trust can allow its emergence. The bouquet of friendship varies with each breath, but when it is there it needs no name. For a long time I believed that there was no one noun for it, and no verb for its creation. Each time I tried one, I was discouraged; all the synonyms for it were shanghaied by its synthetic counterfeits: mass-produced fashions and cleverly marketed moods, chic feelings, swank highs and trendy tastes. Starting in the seventies, group dynamics retreats and psychic training, all to generate "atmosphere," became major businesses. Discreet silence about the issue I am raising seemed preferable to creating a misunderstanding.
Then… I suddenly realized that there is indeed a very simple word that says what I cherished and tried to nourish, and that word is peace. Peace, however, not in any of the many ways its cognates are used all over the world, but peace in its post-classical, European meaning. Peace, in this sense, is the one strong word with which the atmosphere of friendship created among equals has been appropriately named. But to embrace this, one has to come to understand the origin of this peace in the conspirator, a curious ritual behavior almost forgotten today.

Source: Isaac Herzog (2021) cited in " Israel’s president to Palo Alto students: Check out Hebrew TikTok https://www.jweekly.com/2021/12/20/israels-president-to-palo-alto-students-check-out-hebrew-tiktok/" on The Jewish News of Northern California, 20 December 2021.

Talking about "a stark, basic principle underpins even the most complex symphony or mathematical application."
Music + Math: A Common Equation?, 1988

Letter to Thomas Carlyle http://books.google.com/books?id=Fj10a_dl7IwC&q=%22I+am+not+at+all+the+sort+of+person+you+and+I+took+me+for%22&pg=PA32#v=onepage (7 May 1822).

Source: Bless This House

As quoted in "World-Renowned Pediatric Neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson Attributes His Success to Confidence Gained Through Reading and Education" http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/world-renowned-pediatric-neurosurgeon-dr-benjamin-carson-attributes-his-success-to-confidence-gained-through-reading-and-education-132129383.html, PR Newswire (October 19, 2011)

(July 1910)
The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910-1923 (1948)
Context: I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.

Source: Jacques Lipchitz: My life in sculpture, 1972, p. 41

Source: Go Ask Alice