Margot Lane

“For the layman, the most important thing about science is this: that it isn’t a search for truth but a search for error. The scientist lives in a world where truth is unattainable, but where it’s always possible to find errors in the long-settled or the obvious .... So-called “scientific” books that are supposed to contain final answers are never scientific. Science is forever self-correcting and changing; what is put forth as gospel truth cannot be science.”
― Rudolf Flesch, The Art of Clear Thinking

“There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve -- even in pain -- the authentic relationship. Further more, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Nonetheless, it is better to feel hopeful and optimistic about one’s life on earth while engaged in the never-ending struggle to pay rent, than to feel despondent and depressed while engaged in the same non-optional struggle anyway.”
― Sally Rooney, Intermezzo

“This is all so stupid, Sigrun. Life is elsewhere. Life is music and work. Study, teach children, or make sick people well again or build houses or give concerts - you're clever, you're strong: do something with it.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Granddaughter