Reader

“We asked ourselves whether, in these days of equality in which we live, there are classes unworthy the notice of the author and the reader, misfortunes too lowly, dramas too foul-mouthed, catastrophes too commonplace in the terror they inspire.”
― Edmond de Goncourt, Germinie Lacerteux

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“She was, so to speak, an impersonal creature, because of her great heart; a woman who did not belong to herself: God seemed to have made her only to give her to others.”
― Edmond de Goncourt, Germinie Lacerteux

“—Did he even grasp this himself, this cleverest of all self-outwitters? Did he tell himself this in the end, in the wisdom of his courage in the face of death? . . . Socrates wanted to die: not Athens, but he gave himself the poison cup, he forced Athens to give him the poison cup . . . “Socrates is no doctor,” he said to himself softly, “death is the only doctor here . . . Socrates himself has just been sick for a long time.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols