Marina

“All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was—a woman.”
― Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

“You cannot be a powerful and life-changing presence to some people without being a joke or an embarrassment to others.”
― Mark Manson, Models: Attract Women Through Honesty

“The airlock opened before me, edgeless vacuity beyond. There were no winds here, no crashing waves. Only the cold constancy of stars, to which I was just a crude bit of wet carbon, a flake of skin you brush aside. My pain and pettiness and mistakes and inadequacies did not matter. I did not matter. Nothing we did out here mattered. Nothing we could or would ever do would matter, in the face of this.”
― Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate

“The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it.” “Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?” “Quite sure.” “Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray