CJ Lu Sing

“Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man.... Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Lee said, “Remember, Mr. Hamilton, I told you I was trying to translate some old Chinese poetry
into English? No, don’t worry. I won’t read it. Doing it, I found some of the old things as fresh and clear as this morning. And I wondered why. And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule—a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting—only the deeply personal and familiar.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Frankly, the surprising thing about these peoples, when you set aside everyone’s national pride… before visiting a country, I tried to study its history, its Exodus, so to speak, and in the end I found they all followed a common course. In every instance I noted that a people’s prosperity or misery lay in direct proportion to its freedoms or its inhibitions and, along the same lines, of the sacrifice or selfishness of its ancestors.”
― José Rizal, Noli Me Tángere

“Adam said, "I can't get over a feeling that Cain got the dirty end of the stick."
"Maybe he did," said Samuel. "But Cain lived and had children, and Abel lives only in the story. We are Cain's children. And isn't it strange that three grown men, here in a century so many thousands of years away, discuss this crime as though it happened in King City yesterday and hadn't come up for trial?”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden