Washington's body organized the space around it, as a dancer's arms or legs seem to stretch beyond the tips of the fingers or toes. When he entered a room or a crowd, he was noticed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The life that you seek you will never find:
when the gods created mankind,
death they dispensed to mankind,
life they kept for themselves.

It has occurred to me that the thing you have, that all men have enough of, is perhaps the thing that you care for the least, and that is your leisure—the leisure you have to think; the leisure you have to be let alone; the leisure you have to throw the plummet into your mind, and sound the depth and dive for things below.

...such people are themselves too dull to understand how far a noble nature, an honorable ancestry and a virtuous upbringing can fortify men against grief, and that although fate may defeat the efforts of virtue to avert misfortune, it cannot deprive us of the power to endure it with equanimity.

Plutarch on Cornelia, the mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

— But it’s nicer in here ...

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands? 

— But we have to sleep sometime ...

Agreed. But nature set a limit on that — as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota.

Now. ... Close your eyes. It's but a short step to the boat, a short pull across the river.

Truth, no doubt, is greater than beauty. But in many matters beauty can be attained and truth cannot.

...at this moment many of my friends and most of my fellow creatures are, as far as one can judge, quite confident that they possess supernatural knowledge. As a rule, each individual belongs to some body which has received in writing the results of a divine revelation. I cannot share in any such feeling. The Uncharted surrounds us on every side and we must needs have some relation towards it, a relation which will depend on the general discipline of a man's mind and the bias of his whole character. As far as knowledge and conscious reason will go, we should follow resolutely their austere guidance. When they cease, as cease they must, we must use as best we can those fainter powers of apprehension and surmise and sensitiveness by which, after all, most high truth has been reached as well as most high art and poetry; careful always really to seek for truth and not for our own emotional satisfaction, careful not to neglect the real needs of men and women through basing our life on dreams; and remembering above all to walk gently in a world where the lights are dim and the very stars wander.

They regard the NAACP as a Negro snob affair, and I have been trying from Philadelphia to Topeka in the West to disabuse their minds of such a preposterous idea.

It befel upon a Fryday on Mydsomyr Evyn in rygth hot wedyr, as this creatur was komyng fro Yorkeward beryng a botel wyth bere in hir hand and hir husbond a cake in hys bosom, he askyd hys wyfe this qwestyon, "Margery, if her come a man wyth a swerd and wold smyte of myn hed les than I schulde comown kendly wyth yow as I have do befor, seyth me trewth of yowr consciens - for ye sey ye wyl not lye - whether wold ye suffyr myn hed to be smet of er ellys suffyr me to medele wyth yow agen as I dede sumtyme?"
"Alas, ser," sche seyd, "why meve ye this mater and have we ben chast this eight wekys?" 
"For I wyl wete the trewth of yowr hert." 
And than sche seyd wyth gret sorwe, "Forsothe I had levar se yow be slayn than we schuld turne agen to owyr unclennesse."

One can foresee the consequences of a revolution or a war, but it is impossible to foresee the consequences of an autumn shooting-trip for wild ducks.