To be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.', E. E. Cummings',
Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.', Ralph Waldo Emerson', US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882)
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.', Orson Welles, The Third Man, 1949', US actor & director (1915 - 1985)
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval', George Santayana', US (Spanish-born) philosopher (1863 - 1952)
Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.', Gore Vidal, The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1993', US author & dramatist (1925 - )