Lalitha

“Try for a time to learn more of others and to think less of yourself. It is the only road to health. When a thought of yourself comes into your head, tell it to go away. It will go. Thoughts are things.” “But”
― Hermann Hesse, Gertrude

“imagine that every historian is similarly affected when he begins to record the events of some period and wishes to portray them sincerely. Where is the center of events, the common standpoint around which they revolve and which gives them cohesion? In order that something like cohesion, something like causality, that some kind of meaning might ensue and that it can in some way be narrated, the historian must invent units, a hero, a nation, an idea, and he must allow to happen to this invented unit what has in reality happened to the nameless.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“the Confederacy of the Humbled is a close-knit brotherhood whose members travel with no outward markings, but who know each other at a glance. For having fallen suddenly from grace, those in the Confederacy share a certain perspective. Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. They certainly do not scour the papers in search of their own names. They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condescension with an inward smile.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“But every period has its virtues, even a time of turmoil. . . .”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow