Cind

“... men of sense often learn from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learned from a friend, but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. And this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.”
― Aristophanes, Birds

“From earliest childhood, an arrow of grief has been embedded in my heart. As long as it remains there, I am ironic — if it is drawn out, I will die.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks, Vol. 2: Journals EE-KK

“if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“He was thinking that the young years behind him, hollow and colourful, had been lived in facile and vacillating cynicism upon the recorded emotions of men long dust.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned