Jacob

“You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so how could we take it back without asking?”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“Now he understood that a man never knows for whom he suffers and hopes. He suffers and hopes and toils for people he will never know, and who, in turn, will suffer and hope and toil for others who will not be happy either, for man always seeks a happiness far beyond that which is meted out to him. But man's greatness consists in the very fact of wanting to be better than he is. In laying duties upon himself. In the Kingdom of Heaven there is no grandeur to be won, inasmuch as there all is an established hierarchy, the unknown is revealed, existence is infinite, there is no possibility of sacrifice, all is rest and joy. For this reason, bowed down by suffering and duties, beautiful in the midst of his misery, capable of loving in the face of afflictions and trials, man finds his greatness, his fullest measure, only in the Kingdom of this World.”
― Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World

“This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“What's the bravest thing you ever did?
He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road