Quotes

Thomas Gray photo

“Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!
Ah, fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain!
I feel the gales that from ye blow
A momentary bliss bestow.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 2
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=odec (written 1742–1750)

Ritwik Ghatak photo
Willa Cather photo
Lil Peep photo
Layne Staley photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Thomas Paine photo
Thomas Paine photo
Shannon Hale photo
Huey P. Newton photo

“To die for the racists is lighter than a feather, but to die for the people is heavier than any mountain and deeper than any sea.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

To Die for the People (1972), paraphrasing Mao Zedong's "Serve the People"

George Bernard Shaw photo

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”

Preface, The importance of hell in the salvation scheme
Source: 1910s, Androcles and the Lion (1913)
Context: The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.

Voltairine de Cleyre photo

“For the way is not strown with petal soft,
It is covered with hearts that weep,
And the wounds I tread touch a deeper source
Than you think it mine to keep.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

And Thou Too (1888)
Context: For the way is not strown with petal soft,
It is covered with hearts that weep,
And the wounds I tread touch a deeper source
Than you think it mine to keep. Down the years I shall move without you,
Yet ever must feel the blow
That caused me a deeper pain to give
Than you will ever know.

Jason Mraz photo
Fred Astaire photo
Hannah Teter photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Roberto Clemente photo