Elona

“If everybody fought for nothing but his own convictions, there wouldn’t be any wars,”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“It’s really very simple. If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It’s no more than a fact and it has cost you nothing. But if you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty. To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She’s earned it, it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake—and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“that people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by – as they might in a store window – and that such a display needn’t be taken so seriously once the moment had passed.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

“The fundamental reason is that we each carry within us an evolutionary blueprint for making a good society.”
― Nicholas A. Christakis, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society