Matthew Grech

“This sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy. Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet. In the practical life of the individual, we know how his whole gloom or glee about any present fact depends on the remoter schemes and hopes with which it stands related. Its significance and framing give it the chief part of its value. Let it be known to lead nowhere, and however agreeable it may be in its immediacy, its glow and gilding vanish. The old man, sick with an insidious internal disease, may laugh and quaff his wine at first as well as ever, but he knows his fate now, for the doctors have revealed it; and the knowledge knocks the satisfaction out of all these functions. They are partners of death and the worm is their brother, and they turn to a mere flatness.”
― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

“And is it only a dream, that in the end man will find his joy in deeds of enlightenment and mercy alone, and not in cruel pleasures as now?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I do value my idea and my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great—ideas, work—it’s all dust and ashes.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“This child, with his naive outlook on life was the compass which showed them the degree of their departure from what they knew but did not want to know.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina