Ralph Römer

“Voor het geluk zijn we jammerlijk afhankelijk van onze medemensen - zij kunnen ons naar believen hun liefde en hun zorgen geven of onthouden; het ongeluk kunnen we onszelf altijd, naar eigen goeddunken en met het grootste gemak, toedienen.”
― Patricia De Martelaere, Een verlangen naar ontroostbaarheid: Over leven, kunst en dood

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva’s tower...I live still a collegiate student...and lead a monastic life, ipse mihi theatrum [sufficient entertainment to myself], sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world...aulae vanitatem, fori ambitionem, ridere mecum soleo [I laugh to myself at the vanities of the court, the intrigues of public life], I laugh at all.”
― Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy