“Dark came and I asked him what the trees do at night.
‘The sick ones cry,’ he said.
‘And the well?’
‘The well cry for the sick.’ “
– Michael Hurley, “Saint Francis’ Last Day”
“When I’m alone, I take up my pen, intending to write. I bite my nails. I wear out my forehead. No good. Good night. The god is absent. I’d persuaded myself that I had some genius, but at the end of a line I read that I am a fool, a fool, a fool.” – Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew (trans. Ian C. Johnston)
“It would seem that man thinks himself insufficiently supplied with faults, for he increases the number by sundry strange qualities which he affects and cultivates with such diligence that they finally become faults so natural to him that he can no longer correct them.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard)
“Of all our failings laziness is the least known to us. None is more powerful or more malignant, although its ravages are hidden. If we examine carefully into its influence we shall find that it is invariably mistress of our sentiments, interests and pleasures. It is an octopus which holds up the greatest ships; it is a flat calm more dangerous to important ventures than reefs or hurricanes. The indolence of sloth has a subtle and hidden charm for our souls which suspends our most ardent efforts, and crumbles our firmest resolutions.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard)
“Laziness with all its indolence is often the most absolute sovereign; it encroaches upon all the plans and acts of our lives, and, little by little, saps and destroys our passions and our virtues.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard)
“The Philosophers’ scorn of wealth was but their secret ambition to exalt their merit above fortune by deriding those blessings which Fate denied them. It was a ruse to shield them from the sordidness of poverty, and a subterfuge to attain that distinction which they could not achieve by wealth.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard)
“Lord knows what he does that I don’t know and Im to be slooching around down in the kitchen to get his lordship his breakfast while hes rolled up like a mummy will I indeed did you ever see me running id just like to see myself at it show them attention and they treat you like dirt I don’t care what anybody says itd be much better for the world to be governed by the women in it you wouldnt see women going and killing one another and slaughtering when do you ever see women rolling around drunk like they do or gambling every penny they have and losing it on horses yes because a woman whatever she does she knows where to stop sure they wouldnt be in the world at all only for us they don’t know what it is to be a woman and a mother how could they where would they all of them be if they hadnt had a mother to look after them” – James Joyce, Ulysses