Michael

“The most important thing is spiritual labor...Books...You can wear the same suit for twenty years, two coats are enough for a lifetime, but you can't live without Pushkin or the complete works of Gorky.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Czasy secondhand. Koniec czerwonego człowieka

“Left to itself every literature will exhaust its vitality, if it is not refreshed by the interest and contributions of a foreign one. What naturalist does not take pleasure in the wonderful things that he sees produced by reflection in a mirror? Now what a mirror in the field of ideas and morals means, everyone has experienced in himself, and once his attention is aroused, he will understand how much of his education he owes to it.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Hell is other people, said Jean-Paul Sartre. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think he means you.”
― Andy Miller, The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life

“My melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known; what wonder, then, that I love her in return.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life