If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Remark,19 Sep. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.3.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futuritycastsuponthepresent; thewordswhichexpress what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
A Defence of Poetry.

Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity.

-Thoreau, Henry David
  Walden, or Life in theWoods,'Sounds'.