Tom

“When grief for fiction’s idle words More real than human life appears, Reflect that life itself’s a dream And do not mock the reader’s tears.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone

“No sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage...”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“History describes what has happened, poetry what might. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and serious than history; for poetry speaks of what is universal, history of what is particular.”
― Aristotle

“The heresy of an age of reason,' or some such slovos [words]. 'I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange