Esther

“The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Alas, the gates of life never swing open except upon death, never open except upon the palaces and
gardens of death. And the universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden… What I
say today, and what I heard, exists and cries and howls beyond this garden, which is no more than a
symbol to me of the entire earth.”
― Octave Mirbeau, The Torture Garden

“We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism