E

“Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present—intolerable—and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better and better problems.”
― Gordon W. Allport, Becoming: Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality

“Do not wait for a coronation; the greatest emperors crown themselves.”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“We are living in an artificial world—a world of fantasies and illusions. We've learned beautiful phrases but haven't learned yet how to carry out that little bit that we know. Our brains are stuffed with quotations, while at the same time nine out of ten of these dogmas are incomprehensible, murky, or lies. Which are worthwhile and which are not? Yes, I must stop being false before others and myself. How simple it all seems! But how do I do this? Let just a little time pass, and then we may understand—only the simplest, honorable acts determine the value of a man. Only I myself can and must help myself to become an adult.”
― Boris Gorbachevsky, Through the Maelstrom: A Red Army Soldier's War on the Eastern Front, 1942-1945