Lazarus Long

Youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind... a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.

— Robert F. Kennedy

Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret.

— Benjamin Disraeli, "Coningsby"

Youth is a disease from which we all recover.

— Dorothy Fuldheim

Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind; it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear, and despair -- these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being's heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the starlike things and thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what next, and the joy and the game of life. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your despair. So long as your heart receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage, grandeur and power from the earth, from man, and from the Infinite, so long you are young.

— Samuel Ullman

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

— Jesus, "Gnostic Gospels" (Elaine Pagel)

If a man slept by day, he had little time to work. That was a satisfying notion to Escargot.

— "The Stone Giant", James P. Blaylock

He liked fishing a little too much, and he believed that work was something a man did when he had to. He had always been able to get along well enough without it, especially for the last couple of years.

— "The Stone Giant", James P. Blaylock

Would a giant, profit-oriented cartel lie to you?

— Top Ten List, Late Night with David Letterman

Some days you wake and immediately start worrying. Nothing in particular is wrong, it's just the suspicion that forces are aligning quietly and there will be trouble.

— "Survival Series", Jenny Holzer

When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood, like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

— Margaret Atwood, "Alias Grace"

I am examining you on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes.

— Clarence Darrow, to William Jennings Bryan

"Go on, girl! You'll never get a better chance to buy Jif at this price. *Carpe diem*, babe!"

— "The Naked Consumer", Erik Larson

I'm enthralled by combine harvesters. In fact, I yearn to have one -- as a pet.

— "The Day of the Jackal"

The horizon of many people is a circle with a radius of zero. They call this their point of view.

— Albert Einstein