Mrs. Danvers

“We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Just as the light of a single candle can dispel the darkness of a thousand years, the moment we light a single candle of wisdom, no matter how long or deep our confusion, ignorance is dispelled.”
― Joseph Goldstein

“The distance is commonly very great between actual performances and speculative possibility. It is natural to suppose, that as much as has been done to-day may be done to-morrow; but on the morrow some difficulty emerges or some external impediment obstructs. Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure; all take their turns of retardation; and every long work is lengthened by a thousand causes that can, and ten thousand that cannot, be recounted. Perhaps no extensive and multifarious performance was ever effected within the term originally fixed in the undertaker's mind. He that runs against Time, has an antagonist not subject to casualties.

From Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets series, published in 3 volumes between 1779 and 1781, on Alexander Pope”
― Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1

“We learn from history as much as a rabbit learns from an experiment that's performed upon it.”
― W.G. Sebald