Karuna

“Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“...what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principal and another as all that can be conceived of noble and Godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honor that can befall a sensitive being; to be based and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more object than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. I cannot conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I details of advice and bloodshed, my wonder seized, and I turned away with discussed and loathing.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has one seized on it like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling, but I learned that there was, but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death– a state which I feared but did not understand.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The Definitive 1831 Edition of the Gothic Horror Classic