You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth. -H.L. Mencken

…think more about what (you’ll) leave behind.  -James Turrell

A Benediction by a Negro preacher

Dear God:
We ain’t what we orta be
We ain’t what we’re gonna be
We ain’t what we wanta be
But thank God
We ain’t what we wuz

-from Eleanor Roosevelt’s purse on the day of her death

Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface; he, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice. -Washington Irving

The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea. -Isak Dinesen

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow. -Friedrich Nietzsche

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness. -John Ruskin

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

People change and forget to tell each other. -Lillian Hellman