Ben

“But love truly becomes love only when, no longer an embryo developing painfully in the darkness of the body, it ventures to confess itself with lips and breath. However hard it tries to remain a chrysalis, a time comes when the intricate tissue of the cocoon tears, and out it falls, dropping from the heights to the farthest depths, falling with redoubled force into the startled heart.”
― Stefan Zweig, Journey into the Past

“We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“Very well, then there's an experiment, and the thing is proved; one cannot live and count each moment; say what you like, but one cannot.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.”
― Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener