Kate

“That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Just like a murderer jumps out of nowhere in an alley, love jumped out in front of us and struck us both at once”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey