✒️ There exists a law, not written down anywhere, but inborn in our hearts, a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading, a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.

Confucius in his “Book of Songs” quotes an ancient Chinese lamentation (Waley’s translation):

Via David Warren

“The day before me is fraught with God knows what horrors.”

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

Henry van Dyke

“The habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will last you until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”

“…the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”

... Kenneth Grahame (Wind in the Willows)

'O, the blessed coolness!' he said, and sat down, gazing thoughtfully into the river, silent and preoccupied.