“The sound of the gion shoja bells…echoes the impermanence of all things. The colors of sala flowers…reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline.”

“The mind is a city like London,

Smoky and populous: it is a capital

Like Rome, ruined and eternal,

Marked by the monuments which no one

Now remembers. For the mind, like Rome, contains

Catacombs, aqueducts, amphitheatres, palaces,

Churches and equestrian statues, fallen, broken or soiled.

The mind possesses and is possessed by all the ruins

Of every haunted, hunted generation’s celebration.”

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.”

“Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.”

"But In The End, He's Just Another Dead Rat In A Garbage Pail Behind A Chinese Restaurant."

“I’m God’s Lonely Man.”

"If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can't stop you, then you become something else entirely."

“Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave.”

“Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.”

“I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”

“To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe.”

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what's a heaven for?”

“You never got me down, Ray.”

“Don’t be afraid. There’s no such thing as death…”

“Now I would solicit the particular attention of those numerous people who imagine that money is everything in this world, and that rank and ability are inseparable from wealth: let them observe Cincinnatus”

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.”

Credit (painting): Olga Rodina

“The next words that spilled from my lips ... came from so deep within my gut that it nearly made all the things I’ve ever said feel like a lie. I will kill you.”