Karel

“Gradually too, Trotta's disappointment was replaced by a sweet melancholy. He made a pact with his sadness. Everything in the world was as sad as it could be, and at the very heart of this wretched world was the Lieutenant. It was for him that the frogs were bruiting so piteously tonight, and the pain-filled crickets were waiting on his behalf. It was for him that the spring night was filled with such a sweet and easy sadness, for him that the stars were positioned so unattainably high in the sky, and it was to him alone that their light blinked so longingly and vainly. The unending pain of the world fitted itself to Trotta's hurt.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“For all policemen were bright enough to know who they were working for, and they were not working, anywhere in the world, for the powerless.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“Every man is two people, and one hardly knows whether it is in the morning or in the evening that he reverts to his real self.”
― Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities

“Every year, on the Emperor's birthday, he makes a resolution to begin a new life and not get into debt. And so he gets drunk. And comes home late at night, stands in the kitchen with drawn sword, and commands an entire regiment. The pots are platoons, the teacups are units, the plates are companies. Simon Demant is a colonel, a colonel in the service of Franz Joseph I.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March