Bas Slootweg

“The example of syllogism that he had learned in Kiseveter's logic - Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal - had seemed to him all his life correct only as regards Caius, but not at all as regards himself. In that case it was a question of Caius, a man, an abstract man, and it was perfectly true, but he was not Caius, and was not an abstract man.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

“Memories are the height of poetry only when they are memories of happiness. When they graze wounds over which scars have formed they become an aching pain.”
― Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

“the essence of man is really his paradoxical nature, the fact that he is half animal and half symbolic.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil