Category: Thought

No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.

Anthony Trollope, The Bertrams (1859), Ch. 27.

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.

Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener,” in Putnam’s Magazine (November and December 1853 ); revised to final form in The Piazza Tales (1856).

Everyone is more or less mad on one point.

Rudyard Kipling, “On the Strength of a Likeness” in Plain Tales from the Hills (1889).

It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.

Herman Melville, “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” in The Literary World (August 17 & 24, 1850).

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.

Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists: The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting, Nov. 20, 1772.

On April 13, 1970, an oxygen tank aboard the Apollo 13 Service Module exploded, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to Odyssey, the Apollo command and service module, while en route to the Moon.

Sejamos simples e calmos,
Como os regatos e as árvores,
E Deus amar-nos-á fazendo de nós
Belos como as árvores e os regatos,
E dar-nos-á verdor na sua primavera,
E um rio aonde ir ter quando acabemos . . .
E não nos dará mais nada, porque dar-nos mais seria tirar-nos mais.

Let’s be simple and calm,
Like the trees and streams,
And God will love us, making us
Us, even as the trees are trees
And the streams are streams,
And will give us greenness in the spring, which is its season,
And a river to go to when we end . . .
And he’ll give us nothing more, since to give us more would make us less us.

Fernando Pessoa writing under the heteronym Alberto Caeiro, O Guardador de Rebanhos (“The Keeper of Sheep”), VI — in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006).

The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.

Samuel Adams, essay, written under the pseudonym “Candidus,” in The Boston Gazette (October 14, 1771).

That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge to be hereditary.

George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), Article 4.

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.

Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists: The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting, Nov. 20, 1772.