What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble earth-worn, depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe.

Pascal, Blaise. "Pensées." Pensées and Other Writings, edited by Anthony Levi, translated by Honor Levi. Oxford University Press, 2008, no. 55.

Spinoza, Baruch. "The Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect." Ethics: with The Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and Selected Letters, edited by Seymour Feldman, translated by Samuel Shirley. Hackett Publishing Company, 1992, ch. 1, sect. 3.

Homer. The Odyssey, edited by Bernard Knox, translated by Robert Fagles. Penguin Classics, 2006, bk. 18, l. 130.