Thomas Carlyle

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.

A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.

I think a lot of songwriters would agree that it's often easier to find inspiration in misery.