Bethan

“Live hidden if you want to live happily.”
― Jean-Pierre de Florian

“As the future ripens in the past...
a terrible festival of dead leaves”
― Anna Ahkmatova

“Because, on reflection, once you have seen your own face and recognized the color of your eyes, tasted the air and smelled the soil, drunk from the purest fountains and the dirtiest wells, that is the kindest thing you can say abut life. It's not nothing.”
― Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

“The humanitarian, like the missionary, is often an irreducible enemy of the people he seeks to befriend, because he has not imagination enough to sympathize with their proper needs nor humility enough to respect them as if they were his own. Arrogance, fanaticism, meddlesomeness, and imperialism may then masquerade as philanthropy.”
― George Santayana, The Birth of Reason and Other Essays