Nikita

“This does not mean that he was unhappy in any extraordinary degree (although it may have seemed so to himself all the same, inasmuch as every man takes the suffering that falls to his share as the greatest). That cannot be said of any man. Even he who has no wolf in him, may be none the happier for that. And even the unhappiest life has it's sunny moments and it's little flowers of happiness between sand and stone.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”
― Henry Miller, The Books in My Life

“Physical vision - one might say scientific vision - brings about a metaphysical shift in the observer's view of reality as a whole. The geography of the earth, or the structure of the solar system, are in an instant utterly changed, and forever. The explorer, the scientific observer, the literary reader, experience the Sublime: a moment of revelation into the idea of the unbounded, the infinite.”
― Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

“I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real
adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners