Aneece

“The day after the British entered the war Henry James wrote a friend:

The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness... is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words.”
― Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory

“At his most characteristic, medieval man was not a dreamer nor a wanderer. He was an organiser, a codifier, a builder of systems.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature

“For getting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity there is nothing like pouring out on a mind a good amount of subjects in which it feels no interest.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“You're not racing?" joked the officer.

"Mine is a harder race," Alexei Alexandrovich replied respectfully.

And though the reply did not mean anything, the officer pretended that he had heard a clever phrase from a clever man and had perfectly understood.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina