Charlie

“In fact, the sickness I was suffering from was that I had been driven out of the paradise of childhood and had not found my place in the world of adults. I had set myself up in the absolute in order to gaze down upon this world which was rejecting me; now, if I wanted to act, to write a book, to express myself, I would have to go back down there: but my contempt had annihilated it, and I could see nothing but emptiness. The fact is that I had not yet put my hand to the plow. Love, action, literary work: all I did was to roll these ideas round in my head; I was fighting in an abstract fashion against abstract possibilities, and I had come to the conclusion that reality was of the most pitiful insignificance. I was hoping to hold fast to something, and misled by the violence of this indefinite desire, I was confusing it with the desire for the infinite.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“But you can wake a man only if he is really asleep. No effort that you make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“No matter how explicit the pledge, people will turn and twist the text to suit their own purpose”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography