Julian

“Every act alters the soul of the doer.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West

“And to Pierre all people seemed to be such soldiers, saving themselves from life: some with ambition, some with cards, some with drafting laws, some with women, some with playthings, some with horses, some with politics, some with hunting, some with wine, some with affairs of state.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“In a country town I wouldn’t be able to find anymore, the sloping streets are old and the houses are decked with slate. Rain runs along the sculpted pilotis, and its droplets all fall in the selfsame place, with the selfsame sound. The round little windows have sunken into the walls, as if to keep from being struck. There is nothing brave in these streets, save for the ivy above the doors and the moss atop the walls: the ivy’s dark and shiny leaves bare their teeth, and the moss dares consume all the large stones that sit outside its yellow velvet – but the people here are as fleeting as the shadow of rising smoke.”
― Marcel Schwob, The King in the Golden Mask

“Grant [....] had no right to exist. He should have been extinct for ages. [....] That, two thousand years after Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, a man like Grant should be called — and should actually and truly be — the highest product of the most advanced evolution, made evolution ludicrous. [....] The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant, was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin.”
― Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams