"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not."
— André Gide

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."
— André Gide

"Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful."
— Milan Kundera

"What is hell? I still maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering..."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. However, I don't know beans about my disease, and I am not sure what is bothering me. I don't treat it and never have, though I respect medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, let's say sufficiently so to respect medicine. (I am educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, I refuse to treat it out of spite. You probably will not understand that. Well, but I understand it. Of course I can't explain to you just whom I am annoying in this case by my spite. I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "get even" with the doctors by not consulting them. I know better than anyone that I thereby injure only myself and no one else. But still, if I don't treat it, its is out of spite. My liver is bad, well then-- let it get even worse!"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground: with White Nights, The Dreams of a Ridiculous Man, and selections from The House of the Dead)

"It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

"I punish myself for my whole life, my whole life I punish."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life."
— Virginia Woolf

"Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"
— Virginia Woolf

"The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages."
— Virginia Woolf

"I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"In heaven, all the interesting people are missing."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands."
— Anne Frank

"Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction."
— Anne Frank

"In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation."
— Simone de Beauvoir