words to inspire before you expire
“Thus, gentle reader, I have given thee a faithful history of my travels for sixteen years and above seven months: wherein I have not been so studious of ornament as of truth. I could, perhaps, like others, have astonished thee with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact, in the simplest manner and style; because my principal design was to inform, and not to amuse thee.”
—from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
“Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.”
—from Canto I of Dante’s Inferno by Dante Alighieri
“‘Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not.'”
—from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
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