I hope you don't get melancholy as you read the quotes, and listen to the song below, but come away with a new appreciation for life. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "difficult days are ahead." You will be tested. Remember not to get too high, or too low. Strike a balance in your life now, while you still can, while our societies are still stable, and hold your fort down. God bless.
"To refuse to wonder is the mark of the beast." - Nicolás Gómez Dávila
"On this planet a great number of civilizations have perished in blood and horror. Naturally, one must wish for the planet that one day it will experience a civilization that has abandoned blood and horror; in fact, I am. . . inclined to assume that our planet is waiting for this. But it is terribly doubtful whether we can bring such a present to its hundred-or four-hundred-millionth birthday party. And if we don't, the planet will finally punish us, its unthoughtful well-wishers, by presenting us with the Last Judgment." - Walter Benjamin (from a letter written in 1935 in Paris - pg. 38 of his book Illuminations).
"Man is subject to the law of all life, physically and mentally, that living is growing, is being active; when growth stops, decay and death set in." - Erich Fromm (from The Essential Fromm)
"Somewhere along the line, good morale means no longer being afraid to die; it means solving that mythological anxiety about death being something dark and obscure; and it means the willingness to accept fate. Accepting fate and duty and responsibility is living in a different way: it is living with the moral courage to stand for moral principles that you have gathered in your life and without which life is not worth living." - Joost A.M. Meerloo, (from The Rape of the Mind).
