M Wu

“When in my hunting lodge I drank the warm foaming milk which an unkempt wench had drained into a wooden pail from the udder of a beautiful gentle~yed cow, the sen­sation was no different from that which I experienced when, seated on a bench built into the window of my study, my mind absorbed the sweet and foaming nourishment from a book.”
― Hugo von Hofmannsthal

“Then why did we not bring the book?” asked my husband. “Well, it weighs just over a stone,” I said. “I weighed it once on the bathroom scales.” “Why did you do that?” asked my husband. “Because it occurred to me one day that I knew the weight of nothing except myself and joints of meat,” I said, “and I just picked that up to give me an idea of something else.”
― Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

“The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.”
― Edward Gibbon

“I say, gentleman, hadn’t we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground