“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not,
when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.”
-Henry David Thoreau-

“A wee child toddling in a wonder world, I prefer to their dogma, my excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers.
If this is Paganism, then at present, at least, I am a pagan.”
-Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin)-


“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow that runs across the grass
and loses itself in the sunset.”
-Crowfoot; Blackfoot warrior-
 

“I was born upon the prairie where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures and where everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls.”
-Ten Bears, Yamparika Comanche-


You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.
-“Green Mountain” by Li Po-
 

“Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavours to lead man to himself.”
-Hermann Hesse-
 

“One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.”
-Joan of Arc-
 

“Suffering should be creative—should give birth to something good and lovely.”
-Chinua Achebe-
 

"Sometimes life can only really begin with the knowledge of death. That it can all end, even when you least want it to. The important thing in life is to believe that while you're alive, it's never too late. I promise you … no matter how bad things look,
they look better awake than they do asleep. When you die, there's only
one thing you want to happen. You want to come back."
-Jack Starks, The Jacket-


“Then it seemed to me that we must be a terribly lonely people,
cut off from each other by such massive pretense of self-sufficiency,
machined down so fine we hardly touch any more. We are trying to
save ourselves separately, and that is immoral,
that is the corrosive among us.”
-Arthur Miller-
 

“Whatever my passions demand of me, I become for the time being—musician, poet, director, author, lecturer or anything else.”
-Richard Wagner-
 

 “The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
-Satan, Milton’s Paradise Lost-
 

“This much I know: when the storm breaks each man acts in accordance
with his own nature—some are dumb with terror, some flee, some hide
and some spread their wings like eagles and soar on the wind.”
-Elizabeth: The Golden Age-
 

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment
that something else is more important than fear.”
-Ambrose Redmoon-


“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.-
 

“The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all.”
-Timothy Luce-

“What lies before us, and what lies behind us,
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson-
 

“Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he who finds himself, loses his misery.”
-Mathew Arnold-
 

“The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had shed no tears.”
-Indian Proverb-
 

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
-Albert Einstein-
 

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”
-Walter Lipman-
 

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
-Socrates-
 

“Civilization has been thrust upon me ... and it has not added one whit
to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity.”
-Chief Luther Standing Bear-
 

“We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those colleges …
But you, who are wise, must know that different nations have different conceptions
of things: and you will not therefore take it amiss, if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some experience of it; several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the Northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, nor kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counselors; they were totally good for nothing … We are, however not the less obligated by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it; and to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take care of their education, instruct them of all we know, and make men of them.”
-A Native American leader quoted in Psychology: Frontiers and Applications;
originally in Benjamin Franklin’s Remarks Concerning the Savage of North America [1784]-

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