Edgar Lee Masters said this quote

Rather a thousand times the county jail than to lie under this marble figure with wings and this granite pedestal bearing the words pro patria. What do they mean anyway?

~ Edgar Lee Masters

O world, that's you!You are but a widened place in the riverWhere Life looks down and we rejoice for herMirrored in us, and so we dreamAnd turn away

~ Edgar Lee Masters

In time you shall see Fate approach youIn the shape of your own image in the mirror.

~ Edgar Lee Masters

I have studied many timesThe marble which was chiseled for me—A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.In truth it pictures not my destinationBut my life.For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.And now I know that we must lift the sailAnd catch the winds of destinyWherever they drive the boat.To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,But life without meaning is the tortureOf restlessness and vague desire—It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

~ Edgar Lee Masters