Random quotations . . .

1. "Amor vincit omnia."-The Canterbury Tales

2. "When in doubt, tell the truth."-Mark Twain

3. "Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go."-Claudius in Hamlet by Shakespeare

4. "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt."-Mark Twain

5. "Let your own happiness be your only law."-Michael Bakunin, Russian nihilist

6. "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today."-James Dean

7. "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous."
-Julius Caesar in Julius Caesar by Shakespeare (1.2)

8. "We slip and slide as we fall in love
And I just can't seem to get enough . . ."
-Depeche Mode, "I Just Can't Get Enough"

9. "Metal and stone will yield before a pure heart."-Chinese proverb, from Wu Jianren's Sea of Regret

10. "I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."
-T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

11. "Te He! quod she, and clapt the wyndow to."-Canterbury Tales, Miller's Tale

12. "Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again."
-Caliban in The Tempest 3.2.137-145

13. "She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief."
-Viola in Twelfth Night by Shakespeare (2.4)

14. "Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?"-the Joker

15. "Away before me to sweet beds of flowers: love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers."-Orsino

17. "Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were called in the earlier epochs of the world legislators or prophets: a poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time . . . Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."-Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry

18. "Tolerance is necessary to reconcile the man washing his underwear with the crying boy, and the man who destroys the world."-Dennis Bock

20. "The world of poetry, mythology, and religion represents the world as a man would like to have it, while science represents the world as he gradually comes to discover it."-Joseph Wood Krutch

21. "Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow it."-Malcolm Wallace ("Braveheart")

22. "Shit don't just happen. Shit takes TIME. Shit takes EFFORT."-Samuel L. Jackon, Formula 51

26. "All love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

They who inspire it most are fortunate,
As I am now; but those who feel it most
Are happier still.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound. Act ii. Sc. 5 (2004-12)