Lance

“There is a commonplace book argument,
Which glibly glides from every vulgar tongue
When any dare a new light to present:
'If you are right, then everybody's wrong.'
Suppose the converse of this precedent
So often urged, so loudly and so long:
'If you are wrong, then everybody's right.'
Was ever everybody yet so quite?”
― George Gordon Byron, Don Juan

“Pierre's insanity consisted in the face that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Why is Melancholy like Honey? Because it is very sweet, and it is culled from Flowers.”
― Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist

“Although the gods were in the distant skies,
Pythagoras drew near them with his mind;
what nature had denied to human sight,
he saw with his intellect, his mental eye.
When he, with reason and tenacious care,
had probed all things, he taught-- to those who gathered
in silence and amazement-- what he'd learned
of the beginnings of the universe,
of what caused things to happen, and what is
their nature: what god is, whence come the snows,
what is the origin of lightning bolts--
whether it is the thundering winds or Jove
that cleave the cloudbanks-- and what is the cause
of earthquakes, and what laws control the course
of stars: in sum, whatever had been hid,
Pythagoras revealed.”
― Ovid