I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.

I used to think I was the strangest person in the world.

Stand a little out of my sunlight.

-- Diogenes of Sinope

If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.

-- Diogenes of Sinope

In the northern darkness there is a fish called Kun. The Kun is so vast one cannot tell how many thousands of li it spans. It transforms into a bird called Peng. The back of the Peng is so vast one cannot tell how many thousands of li it spans.

-- Zhuang Zhou

A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.

-- Benedictus de Spinoza

World history is progress in the consciousness of freedom.

-- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

-- Søren Kierkegaard