"And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set."

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“Closed societies are now the flimsiest of illusions, for all the outsiders are demanding in.”

“And I knew that it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others.”

“And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.”

“Let's not play these kids cheap; let's find out what they have that is a strength. What do they have that you can approach and build a bridge upon? Education is all a matter of building bridges, it seems to me.”

“Articles on Ellison at The New York Times”

“The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Hippocrates himself is an example of the concurrent study of the two departments. On the one hand, he was the first of the Greeks who is known to have compiled a book of Elements. This book, we may be…"

— Thomas Little Heath

Mathematics1861–1940

#knowledge

"In periods of frenzied haste toward wealth, of feverish speculation and of crisis, of the sudden downfall of great industries and the ephemeral expansion of other branches of production, of scandalous…"

— Peter Kropotkin

Philosophy1842–1921

#time

"On one side, your lordships have the prisoner declaring that the people have no laws, no rights, no usages, no distinctions of rank, no sense of honor, no property; in short that they are nothing but …"

— Edmund Burke

Philosophy1729–1797

#wisdom

"Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over t…"

— Charlotte Brontë

Literature1816–1855

#life