Mona

“What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either - Or

“And what is life but madness, and faith but folly, and hope but reprieve, and love but salt in the wound?”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“man is a frivolous and incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game, not the end of it.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“I may wear the skin of an urbane sophisticate, but in this manuscript I invite you to strip it off and laugh at my stupidity.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man