Thought 11: Tacitus on England

'The sky is overcast with continual rain

and cloud, but the cold is not severe.

The length of the days is beyond the

measure of our world: the nights are

clear and, in the distant parts of Britain,

short, so that there is but a brief space

separating the evening and 

the morning twilight.'

—Tacitus,

Agricola, 

12.3–4

Thought 10: Heidegger on Thinking

'We never come to thoughts.

They come to us.

That is the proper

hour of discourse.'

—Martin Heidegger,

Poetry, Language, Thought,

I. The Thinker as Poet

Thought 9: Plutarch on Public Life

'This is really the predicament of men in public life
who respond to the caprices and impulses of mobs:
they make themselves slaves and followers
in order that they may be called 

leaders of men and rulers.'

—Plutarch, Lives, 

Agis and Cleomenes, 

1.2