Clippings

They require shade and  covering, they require kneaded bread and wine and oil, and if any of  these things fails them, they perish; for us, on the other hand, any  grass or root serves as bread, the juice of any plant as oil, any water  as wine, any tree as a house. Furthermore, this region is familiar to us  and is our ally, but to them it is unknown and hostile. As for the  rivers, we swim them naked, whereas they do not across them easily even  with boats. Let us, therefore, go against them trusting boldly to good  fortune. Let us show them that they are hares and foxes trying to rule  over dogs and wolves.

-- Boadicea, as recorded by Dio Cassius in his Roman History

I am not a traitor of my people. Those whom you are asking about will  reveal themselves when they have succeeded in wiping out all you evildoers, to the last man.

– Lepa Svetozara Radic, just before her execution.

Real truth about it is
No one gets it right
Real truth about it is
We're all supposed to try

-Jason Molina, Farewell Transmission

“I was conceited enough to think that I could do it”

– Jimmy Furey, master boatbuilder on the river Shannon in Ireland.

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The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is  its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each  fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The  vaster the power gained the vaster the appetite for more.

-Ursula K. Le Guin, from The Lathe of Heaven

[T]he self is never to be found, but must be created, not the happy accident of passivity, but the product of a thousand actions, large and small, conscious or unconscious, performed not “away from it all,” but in the face of “it all,” for better or for worse, in work and leisure rather than in free time.

The self is a style of being, continually expanding in a vital process of definition, affirmation, revision, and growth, a process that is the image, we may say, of the life process of a healthy society itself.

– Robert Penn Warren

Enjoyment is always greatest when you have enough contrast to measure it by.

– Capi Blanchet, author of The Curve of Time

The old canoe was full of grub. Nothing to worry about,  then; nothing to do but paddle. When we came to a good place, we stopped  and swam. It was a peaceful, swinging life, full of sunshine, without  special adventure. It needed no adventure beyond itself.

– Barbara Newhall Follett