adri

“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness...”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“It’s funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.”
― Nella Larsen, Passing

“We are asleep until we fall in Love!”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“At the time of the Emperor's coronation, some small matter of parish business took him to Paris. Among the influential personages whom he had occasion to visit was Cardinal Fesch, the uncle of Napoleon, and it happened one day, when he was waiting in the cardinal's antechamber, that the Emperor passed through on his way to call on his uncle. Seeing the old priest intently regarding him, he turned to him and asked sharply:
"Who is the gentleman who is staring at me?"
"Sire," replied M. Myriel, "you are looking at a plain man and I am looking at a great man. Each of us may benefit."
That evening the Emperor asked the cardinal the priest's name, and shortly afterwards M. Myriel learned to his great surprise that he had been appointed Bishop of Digne.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables: Penguin Classics