fey

“Kıtaları ipek kumaş gibi keser biçerdik. Kelleler damlardı kılıcımızdan. Bir biz vardık cihanda, bir de küffar…
Zafer Sabahları kovalayan bozgun akşamları. İhtiyar dev, mazideki ihtişamından utanır oldu. Sonra utanç, unutkanlığa bıraktı yerini, “Ben Avrupa’lıyım” demeğe başladı, “Asya bir cüzzamlılar diyarıdır.”
Avrupalı dostları acıyarak baktılar ihtiyara ve kulağına “Hayır delikanlı” diye fısıldadılar, “sen bir az-gelişmişsin.”
Ve Hristiyan batının göğsümüze iliştirdiği bu idam yaftasını, bir nişan-ı zişan” gibi gururla benimsedi aydınlarımız.”
― Cemil Meriç, Bu Ülke

“What, I wondered, did he mean by “society”? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called “society”? I had spent my whole life thinkng that society must certainly be something powerful, harsh and severe, but to hear Horiki talk made the words “Don’t you mean yourself?” come to the tip of my tongue. But I held the words back, reluctant to anger him.
‘Society won’t stand for it.’
‘It’s not society. You’re the one who won’t stand for it - right?’
‘If you do such a thing society will make you suffer for it’
‘It’s not society. It’s you, isn’t it?’
‘Before you know it, you’ll be ostracized by society.’
‘It’s not society. You’re going to do the ostracizing, aren’t you?’
Words, words of every kind went flitting through my head. “Know thy particular fearsomeness, thy knavery, cunning and witchcraft!” What I said, however, as I wiped the perspiration from my face with a handkerchief was merely, “You’ve put me in a cold sweat!” I smiled.
From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual?”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“The ones who love us never really leave us, you can always find them in here.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“In China, any idea that dared to take flight would only crash back to the ground. The gravity of reality is too strong.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem