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“the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all—is called “life.” Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft—and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them! Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves. Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

“Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“But what was happiness but an extravagance, an impossible state to maintain, partly because it was so difficult to articulate?”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty - unless she is wed to something more meaningful - is always superficial.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History