"'Nothing in the world is difficult,' said the Patriarch, 'it is only our own thoughts that make things seem so.'"

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“I have not used rhyme, because what is really, in the long run, of most interest to American readers is what the poems say; and if one uses rhyme, it is impossible not to sacrifice sense to sound.”

“I would rather be dead.”

“A team of horses cannot overtake a word that has left the mouth.”

“Though the snow-drifts of Yoshino were heaped across his path, doubt not that whither his heart is set, his footsteps shall tread out their way.”

“Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.”

“To the European poet the relation between man and woman is a thing of supreme importance and mystery. To the Chinese, it is something commonplace, obvious—a need of the body, not a satisfaction of the emotions.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoug…"

— Alexis de Tocqueville

Politics1805–1859

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"Thought-economy is most highly developed in mathematics, that science which has reached the highest formal development, and on which natural science so frequently calls for assistance. Strange as it m…"

— Ernst Mach

Science1838–1916

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"To the jury foreman in the second trial: "Mr. Rodriguez? Can I ask you a question? What do you think a grown man up in his 40s is doing sleeping with one little boy after the next, all by himself, loc…"

— Nancy Grace

Journalism1959

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"I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you…"

— Michel Foucault

Literature1926–1984

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