"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books"
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"This is the captain we have a little problem with our entry sequence so we may experiance some slight turbulance, then explode."
— Joss Whedon (Serenity Official Visual Companion)

"Doctor, I'm taking your sister under my protection if any thing happens to her I swear to you I will get very choked up. Honestly there might be tears."
— Joss Whedon (Firefly Official Companion, Vol. 1)

"We have done the impossible. And that makes us mighty."
— Mal Reynolds

"If you have time to chatter,
Read books.

If you have time to read,
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean.

If you have time to walk,
Sing songs and dance.

If you have time to dance,
Sit quietly, you happy, lucky idiot."
— Nanao Sakaki

"Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship--a play between diving grace and willful self-effort. Half of it you have no control over; half of it is absolutely in your hands, and your actions will show measurable consequence. Man is neither entirely a puppet of the gods, nor is he entirely the captain of his own destiny; he's a little bit of both. We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses -- one foot is on the horse called 'fate,' the other on the horse called 'free will.' And the question you have to ask every day is-- which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it's not under my control, and which do I need to sterr with concentrated effort?"
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls."
— Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)

"Pursue not the outer entanglements; Dwell not in the inner void; Be serene in the oneness of things; And dualism vanishes by itself."
— Seng-t'san (Hsin-Hsin Ming)

"Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity."
— Laozi

"Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. Every breath we take, every step we take, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment."
— Thich Nhat Hanh

"I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."
— William Wordsworth

"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference."
— Reinhold Niebuhr

"The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is."
— Jiddu Krishnamurti