Power doesn't have to show off.
Power is confident, self-assuring,
self-starting and self-stopping,
self-warming and self-justifying.
When you have it, you know it.
Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man
How softly summer shuts,
without the creaking of a door.
Emily Dickinson, Letters of Emily Dickinson
At times it seems to me that I am living my life backwards,
and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin.
My soul was born covered with wrinkles—
wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there
and that I had the greatest trouble removing.
Andre Gide, An Unprejudiced Mind
I did not come to solve anything.
I came here to sing
and for you to sing with me.
Pablo Neruda, final lines of Let the Rail Splitter Awake