Giri

“This struggle (...between the instinct of life and the instinct of destruction) is what all life essentially consists of, and the evolution of civilization may therefore be simply described as the struggle for life of the human species. And it is this battle that our nurse-maids try to appease with their lullaby about Heaven.”
― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

“It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement - that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life. And yet, in making any general judgement of this sort, we are in danger of forgetting how variegated the human world and its mental life are.”
― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

“Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“That's the magic of literature. We read a story, and something happens. We don't know what or why, nor which sentence was responsible, but the world has changed and will never be the same again. Sometimes it take us several years to realize that a book tore a hole in reality through which we could escape from the pettiness and despondency of our surroundings”
― Nina George, The Book of Dreams