Nicolas Slunsky

“Full freedom will come only when it makes no difference whether to live or not to live. That’s the goal for everyone.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons

“In the city the wretched feel less sad. One can live there a hundred years without being noticed, and be dead a long time before anybody will notice it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

“As long as we desire, we can do without happiness: we expect to achieve it. If happiness fails to come, hope persists, and the charm of illusion lasts as long as the passion that causes it. So this condition is sufficient in itself, and the anxiety it inflicts is a sort of enjoyment that compensates for reality… Woe to him who has nothing left to desire… We enjoy less what we obtain than what we hope for, and we are happy only before being happy.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie, or the New Heloise

“Arrived at an age when others had already long been married and had children and held important positions, and were obliged to produce the best that was in them with all their energy, I still regarded myself as youthful, a beginner who faced immeasurable time, and I was hesitant about final decisions of any kind.”
― Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday