Inspiration

Words strung together by other scribblers I simply could not scribble better myself, and which have caused me serious thought.  You may notice a few of these words and ideas cropping up in posts on my main page now and again, but until then, here they rest. 

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"The best romance becomes dangerous, if, by its excitement, it renders the ordinary course of life uninteresting, and increases the morbid thirst for useless acquaintance with scenes in which we shall never be called upon to act."   - John Rushkin, Sesame and Lilies

"The truth is, if what we choose to do with ours lives won't make a story meaningful, it won't make a life meaningful either."  - Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

"Few persons are good talkers who are not extensive and miscellaneous readers."  Eliza Leslie, Miss Leslie's Behaviour Book

"Multitudes may agree in maintaining some system or doctrine, which perhaps one out of a million may have convinced himself of by research and reflection; while the rest have assented to it in implicit reliance on authority."  - Richard Whately, Elements of Rhetoric

"The very nature of words makes it almost unavoidable for many of them to be doubtful and uncertain in their signification." - John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

"If a phrase comes to you easily, look at it with deep suspicion."  - William Zinsser, On Writing Well

"And it is on of the distinctive features of a good intellect not to love words, but the truth in words."  - St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine

"Pessimism and negativism are cankers in the soul of long-distance voyagers, and continuance of journeys owes about as much to blind faith as realistic assessment..."  - William Least Heat-Moon, River-Horse

"Accuracy is admired in art, grandeur in the works of nature, and...it is by nature that man is endowed with the power of speech."  - Longinus, On the Sublime