K

“The princes of the royal house who stayed behind in their native land were wiser; they ordained, with the consent of the people, that no inhabitant should ever again leave our little kingdom; and this is what has preserved our innocence and our happiness. […] As we are surrounded by inaccessible mountains and precipices, we have so far been protected against the rapacity of the European states, with their irrational lust for the pebbles and mud of our land, for whose sake they would kill every last one of us.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“For there are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life. There is a determined though unseen bravery, which defends itself foot to foot in the darkness against the fatal invasions of necessity and of baseness. Noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye sees, which no renown rewards, which no flourish of triumph salutes. Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battle-fields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes. Strong and rare natures are thus created; misery, almost always a stepmother, is sometimes a mother; privation gives birth to power of soul and mind; distress is the cure of self-respect; misfortune is a good breast for great souls.”
― Victor Hugo

“A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour. To meditate is to labour; to think is to act.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Without strength you go nowhere; and strength is acquired by strength.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky