The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

There are no second acts in American lives.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

The history of humanity is also a history of excavating hidden facts.

-- Seicho Matsumoto

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

-- Henrik Ibsen

Be not defeated by the rain, be not defeated by the wind.

-- Kenji Miyazawa

Follow heaven and forsake the self.

-- Natsume Soseki

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!

-- Jane Austen

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

-- Jane Austen