To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things. Notes from Underground

I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation -- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every states I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move. Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain. The Karamazov Brothers

A man never speaks of himself without losing something. What he says in his disfavor is always believed, but when he commends himself, he arouses mistrust. Essays