“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

– Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

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“Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of a universe which is not the same as our own and of which, without art, the landscapes would remain as unknown to us as those that may exist on the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance.”

– Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

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“The port was alive with strange faces. It was dawn by the time he found an old salt willing to part with a vessel for what bullion he had left, a cutter with a Bermuda rig called the Merciful, the sails ragged and ripped, its compass cracked, its rotten hull just barely able to cut the breakers. But it would be enough to make his escape.

It wasn't for another hour, when he was a mile from the docks, that his thoughts turned back to her, he imagined her alone. By then, she would have searched the house and found it empty. She had suspected it all along, and now she knew, he was a coward. A coward dressed in the uniform of a brave man. Brave enough to cross two oceans and a continent to find her, to fight countless enemies, and yet, in the end he was terrified. Terrified of her.

To lie beside her, to be comforted by her as he wept, to show her he was small, for her to know that and touch his cheek and whisper words softly into his ear, all of that was a nightmare. All he knew to do was run. But now, here, he was free.

He took a deep breath of the air, tasting the salt on his tongue and closed his eyes, leaning into the spray as the Merciful picked up speed and sailed for the horizon. He was alone and all was well.

He did not have her and did not want her. He had this and this was enough. Always. He would always have the sea.”

– Untitled Romance Novel, The Leftovers

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“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

– Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

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“It's tragic how few people possess their souls before they die. Nothing is more rare in any man than an act of his own. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions. Their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

– Oscar Wilde, The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde

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“I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real, thorough illness. For man’s everyday needs, ordinary human consciousness would be more than enough, but no, we must have this hyper-awareness, this cursed ability to feel every crack in our souls. I’d trade it all for stupidity, for peace! I envy the man who can live without thinking, who doesn’t lie awake gnawing at himself. But me? I dissect every thought, every shame, until I’m sick with it. And yet—I wouldn’t give it up. It’s my curse, my pride, my everything.”

– Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

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“When a child first catches adults out - when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just - his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”

– John Steinbeck, East of Eden

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People think that they can love only when they find a worthy partner—nonsense! You will never find one. People think they will love only when they find a perfect man or a perfect woman. Nonsense! You will never find them, because perfect women and perfect men don’t exist. And if they exist, they won’t bother about your love. They will not be interested. I have heard about a man who remained a bachelor his whole life because he was in search of a perfect woman. When he was seventy, somebody asked, “You have been traveling and traveling—from New York to Kathmandu, from Kathmandu to Rome, from Rome to London you have been searching. Could you not find a perfect woman? Not even one?” The old man became very sad. He said, “Yes, once I did. One day, long ago, I came across a perfect woman.” The inquirer said, “Then what happened? Why didn’t you get married?” Sadly, the old man said, “What to do? She was looking for a perfect man.”

– Osho Rajneesh

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“You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you.”

– Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Netochka Nezvanova

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“You walked, by chance, into a life I wasn't proud of, and from that day something started to change. I have breathed better, I have hated less, I have freely admired what was meant to be.

Before you, without you, I adored nothing.

With you, I have accepted more things, I have learned to live. That's probably why I've always mixed my love with so much gratitude.”

– Albert Camus, in a letter to Maria Casarés

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“Yes, life is full, there is life even underground,” he began again. “You wouldn’t believe, Alexey, how I want to live now, what a thirst for existence and consciousness has sprung up in me within these peeling walls… And what is suffering? I am not afraid of it, even if it were beyond reckoning. I am not afraid of it now. I was afraid of it before… And I seem to have such strength in me now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, ‘I exist.’ In thousands of agonies — I exist. I’m tormented on the rack — but I exist! Though I sit alone on a pillar — I exist! I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”

– Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

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“There is a point in the history of society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining “punishment” and “being supposed to punish” hurts it, arouses fear in it. “Is it not enough to render him undangerous? Why still punish?
Punishing itself is terrible.” With this question, herd morality, the morality of timidity, draws its ultimate consequence.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

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“I have led a toothless life, he thought. A toothless life. I have never bitten into anything. I was waiting. I was reserving myself for later on - and I have just noticed that my teeth have gone.”

– Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason

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“‘I’ve always wanted to ask,’ Myshkin said quietly, ‘why do people laugh at goodness? I’ve seen it—someone does a kind thing, and they’re mocked, called a fool. I’ve felt it myself, that sting, but I can’t stop believing in it. Yesterday, I gave a beggar my last coin, and a man sneered at me. Why does it hurt so much to be good?’ His voice trembled, his pale face glowing with a strange earnestness. Rogozhin shrugged. ‘Because the world’s rotten, and you’re too soft for it.’ Myshkin smiled faintly. ‘Maybe. But I’d rather be broken than cruel.’”

– Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

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“It was much better to imagine men in some smokey room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told the children bed time stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.”

– Terry Pratchett, Jingo

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“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

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“Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy — that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.”

– John Steinbeck, East of Eden

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“If someone here told me to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write, “I recognize only one duty, and that is to love.” And, as far as everything else is concerned, I say no. I say no with all my strength.”

– Albert Camus

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“We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.”

– J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

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“I longed to fling myself into debauchery, to drown my misery in it, but I couldn’t even manage that—I was too cowardly, too fastidious. Instead, I’d sit in my corner, gnawing at myself, nursing my spite. I’d dream of grand revenges, of crushing my enemies with my brilliance, but in reality I’d just sulk and do nothing. I’d go to some filthy tavern, drink cheap vodka, and pick fights with strangers, only to slink away humiliated. Oh, if you only knew how I hated myself in those moments! But I couldn’t stop—I needed that shame, that sting, to feel alive.”

– Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

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“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

– Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

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