M. Richard

“Everything goes by — men, the seasons, the clouds, and there is no use clinging to the stones, no use fighting it out on some rock in midstream; the tired fingers open, the arms fall back inertly and you are still dragged into the river, the river which seems to flow so slowly yet never stops

From day to day Drogo felt the mysterious flood grow stronger and sought invain to hold it back. He had no points of reference in the unvarying life of the Fort and the hours slipped away from him before he could count them”
― Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe

“There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Be kind to as many people as you can, says our anonymous author, and you'll find faces you are glad to see wherever you go.”
― Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed

“The birches are not stuck in, they are planted or seeded, and they ought to be carefully tended. Only those nations have a future, only those nations can be called historical, that have a sense of what is important and significant in their institutions, and value them.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina