"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it."
— Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment)

"The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be."
— Edgar Allan Poe

"Just living is not enough... One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."
— Hans Christian Andersen

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?"
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"They change their climate, not their soul, who rush across the sea. "
— Quintus Horatius Flaccus

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life."
— Titus Lucretius Carus (The Way Things Are: The De Rerum Natura)

"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me? Memoria hospitis unius diei prætereuntis."
— Blaise Pascal (Pensees)

"A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke."
— Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or 1: Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol. 3)