Justin Lancy

To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium. And if, as Napoleon wrote to Carnot, “the art of government is not to let men go stale,” then it is essentially an art of unbalancing.

Too often the rules we fear to break are the ones that forbid us from taking care of ourselves at the expense of someone else’s inconvenience or hurt feelings.

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. Michel de Montaigne

Franz Kafka wrote, “It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.”

One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world’s problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive—it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.

Henry David Thoreau, one of the great explorers of his time, reminded himself in his journal, “It matters not where or how far you travel—the farther commonly the worse—but how much alive you are.

Knowledge sets us free, art sets us free. A great library is freedom.

E. L. Doctorow once said that "writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”