Ahmed

“People describing prisons have always tried to lay the horror on thick. But perhaps prison is most horrible when there is no horror? When the horror consists in the gray routine never varying from week to week? When you forget that the one and only life given to you on this earth has been wrecked? When you are willing to forgive, have already forgiven the swine for all this? When your only thought is how to grab a crusty piece of bread, not one that is all crumb? Or how to get underwear with no holes in it, and not too small, next bath day?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, In the First Circle

“indolence is more painful than labor.”
― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1: 180-395

“En général, on ne demande de conseils, disait-il, que pour ne les pas suivre ; ou, si on les a suivis, que pour avoir quelqu’un à qui l’on puisse faire le reproche de les avoir donnés. »”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers: Le Trois Mousquetaires

“If only I believed that there is any backward and forward in human history! It’s like an octopus, with neither back nor front. For me there’s no word so devoid of meaning as ‘progress.’ What progress, Illarion Palych? Progress from what? To what? In those twenty-seven centuries, have people become better? kinder? or at least a bit happier? No, they’ve become worse, nastier, and unhappier! And all this thanks to beautiful ideas!”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, In the First Circle