Sagan

“Nice comes from the Latin word for “stupid”,’ said Griffin. ‘We do not want to be nice.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“I have a religion, my own religion, and I even have more religion than all of them, with their mummery and hocus-pocus. I adore God! I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever He is, it doesn't matter to me, who has placed us here below to fulfill our duties as citizens and as fathers; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates and empty my pocket to fatten a lot of humbugs who are better fed than we are! For one can honor Him just as well in the woods, in a field, or even by contemplating the vault of the heavens, as the ancients did. My personal God is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, Voltaire, and Béranger. I'm for the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar and the immoral principles of '89! So I don't admit any old codger of a God who walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, lodges his friends in the bellies of whales, dies with a groan and comes to life at the end of three days: absurdities in themselves and, furthermore, completely opposed to all physical laws; which proves, by the way, that the priests have always beens sunk in a mire of ignorance in which they force the populace to wallow with them.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“So, you see, translators do not so much deliver a message as the rewrite the original. And herein lies the difficulty - rewriting is still writing, and writing always reflects the authors ideology and biases.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“And sometimes in the depths of corruption flowers of human sympathy and fruits of perfumed tears are to be found and gathered.”
― Kafū Nagai