Koko

“Shame on me for making such a mockery of myself. Blame it on my wounded pride. The fact is that my fear of being ridiculed is so intense I'd rather beat my critics to the punch. That's the epitome of cowardice.”
― Osamu Dazai, The Flowers of Buffoonery

“For with regard to nature, it is indeed experience which supplies us with the rule and is the source of truth; with regard to moral laws, however, experience is, alas!, but the mother of illusion; and it is altogether reprehensible either to derive or to try to limit the laws of what we ought to do from what is done.”
― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

“Human nature," I continued, "has its limitations. It can bear joy and suffering, and pain to a certain degree, but perishes when this point is passed. Here there can therefore be no question of whether a man is strong or weak, but of whether he can endure his suffering, be it moral or physical. And I find it just as astonishing to say that a man who takes his own life is a coward, as it would be improper to call a man a coward who dies of a pernicious fever.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected Writings

“This false notion of the body as the testing ground for intimacy has long warped our understanding of what constitutes a romantic relationship. The measure of intimacy is not the quotient of friction between skin and skin, but something else entirely—something of the love and trust, the joy and ease that flow between two people as they inhabit that private world walled off from everything and everyone else.”
― Maria Popova, Figuring