Mori Mox

“When the moral courage to make decisions and distinctions between reality and deception degenerates to that point, then there is an end of life, of judgement, of the creative deed: the process of decay sets in, moral scepsis, and does its deadly work.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“Then as he had kept watch Sam had noticed that at times a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was even clearer and stronger. Frodo's face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiseling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way to himself. He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmured: "I love him. He's like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

“All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.”
― Thomas Mann