Matt

“Assert the most absurd nonsense, call it a scientific truth, and back it up with strange words which, like potentiality, etc., sound as if they had a meaning but in reality have none, and nine out of every ten men who read your book will believe you. Acquire a remarkable name in one branch of human knowledge, and presto! you are infallible in all. Who can contradict you, if you only wrap up your assertions in specious phrases that not one man in a million attempts to ascertain the real meaning of? We like so much to be saved the trouble of thinking,that it is far easier and more comfortable to be led than to contradict, to fall in quietly with the great flock of sheep that jump blindly after their leader than to remain apart, making one's self ridiculous by foolishly attempting to argue. Real argument, in fact, is very difficult, for several reasons: first, you must understand your subject well, which is hardly likely; secondly your opponent must also understand it well, which is even less likely; thirdly you must listen patiently to his arguments, which is still less likely; and fourthly, he must listen to yours, the least likely of all.”
― Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon and 'Round the Moon

“Now the twin leaves of the seedling chestnut oak on the Carvin's cover path have dried, dropped, and blown; the acorn itself is shrunk and sere. But the sheath of the stem holds water and the white root still delicately sucks, porous and permeable, mute. The death of the self of which the great writers speak is no violent act. It is merely the joining of the great rock heart of the earth in its roll. It is merely the slow cessation of the will's sprints and the intellect's chatter: it is waiting like a hollow bell with stilled tongue. Fuge, tace, quiesce. The waiting itself is the thing.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“Informed of his death, Ritter recalled something Meyers had told him at their first meeting seven years earlier. "I am like an old hemlock," he said. "My head is still high but the winds of close to a hundred winters have whistled through my branches, and I have been witness to many wondrous and many tragic things. My eyes perceive the present, but my roots are imbedded [sic] deeply in the grandeur of the past.”
― Maury Klein, Stealing Games: How John McGraw Transformed Baseball with the 1911 New York Giants

“I fingered the winterkilled grass, looping it round the tip of my finger like hair, ruffling its tips with my palms. Another year has twined away, unrolled and dropped across nowhere like a flung banner painted in gibberish. "The last act is bloody, however brave be all the rest of the play; at the end they throw a little earth upon your head, and it's all over forever.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek