Eblan

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“What is stronger in us — passion or habit? Or are all the violent impulses, all the whirl of our desires and turbulent passions, only the consequence of our ardent age, and is it only through youth that they seem deep and shattering?”
― Nikolai Gogol

“The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.”
― Italo Calvino

“A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.”
― Aleksander Pushkin