We have five senses in which we glory and which we recognize and celebrate, senses that constitute the sensible world for us. But there are other senses — secret senses, sixth senses, if you will — equally vital, but unrecognized, and unlauded. – Oliver Sacks
And if you find everything as soon as you look for it, you find it in vain, you look for it in vain. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
It is a sore point, because you do have advantages if you have access to more than one language. You also have problems, because on bad days you dont trust yourself, either in your first or your second language, and so you feel like a complete halfwit. – W. G. Sebald
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn. – Joseph Addison
There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands. – Plato
Like steam from a cup of hot tea that fogs our glasses, false urgency of matters at hand blurs our vision to important things in the distance. – Terri Guillemets
