"The man who is isolated, who is unable to share in the benefits of... association, or has no need to share because he is already self-sufficient... must... be either a beast or a god."
-Aristotle, Politics

"People aren't people, except in the way they relate to one another."
-Someone Meara Can't Remember

"But what is it, then, that fills me with joy when I am alone with myself? I rejoice in myself, in the entire universe, in all that is and that can be, in all that is beautiful in the world of the senses, the world of the imagination, and the world of the mind."
-Rousseau in a letter to Malesherbes from Montmorency in 1762

"I must speak, not because it is the best thing to do, but because it is so hard to refrain."
-Petrarch, On his own Ignorance

"Plenty have hoped and dreamed and prayed
But they can't get out of Klimovich."
-The Last Five Years

"Now, nothing makes me more angry than people who torment one another, particularly if young people in the prime of their lives, when they should be most receptive of all pleasures, mutually spoil their few good days by putting on moody faces, realising only when it is too late that they have wasted something irrecoverable."
-Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

"Spirit is a commanding and an unconquerable thing."
~Aristotle, Politics

"I certainly think it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you want to control her, it is necessary to treat her roughly... Since, fortune is a woman, she is always well disposed towards young men, because they are less cautious and more aggressive, and treat her more boldly"
~Machiavelli, The Prince