Commonplaces

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

—Edgar Allen Poe

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

—John Locke, Of Reading

Why shouldn’t things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together.

—George Santayana

To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be.

—Anna Louise Strong

There ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

—Mark Twain

The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.

—Thomas Paine

The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.

—JFK, Amherst College, 10/26/63

The future masters of technology will have to be lighthearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb.

—Marshall McLuhan, 1969