Abe

“As a brute I was more thankful for a mitigation of punishment, than as a king I had been for offers of the highest happiness and honour. And who that is not taught by affliction, can justly estimate the bounties of Heaven?”
― John Hawkesworth, The Adventurer

“The grandeur of [great artists] works was an argument with them, not to stop short, but to proceed. They could have no higher excitement or satisfaction than in the exercise of their art and endless generation of truth and beauty. Success prompts to exertion; and habit facilitates success.”
― William Hazlitt, The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things

“There are people who like to ascribe only the basest of motives to the actions of others. This is not always because they act basely themselves; often they would not dream of acting as they suspect others of doing. They talk like this because they think that cynical explanations testify to their knowledge of life. A readiness to believe that others are acting honourably, so they imagine, is a sign of naiveté.”
― Vasily Grossman, Stalingrad

“New and strange emotions arose in the mind of Gertrude. … She replied, that no one could oblige her to take the veil, without her own consent; that she could also marry, inhabit a palace, and enjoy the world; that she could if she wished it; that she would wish it, and did wish it. The necessity of her own consent, hitherto little considered, became henceforth the ruling thought of her mind; she called it to her aid, at all times, when she desired to luxuriate in the pleasing images of future felicity.”
― Alessandro Manzoni, The Bethrothed