JK

“Philip remembered the story of the Eastern King who, desiring to know the history of man, was brought by a sage five hundred volumes; busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history now was in no more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so many ponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passed again and the sage, old and gray, brought a single book in which was the knowledge the King had sought; but the King lay on his death-bed, and he had no time to read even that; and then the sage gave him the history of man in a single line; it was this: he was born, he suffered, and he died.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Even a highwayman, in the way of trade, may blow out your brains, but if he uses foul language at the same time, I should say he was no gentleman.”
― William Hazlitt, On The Pleasure of Hating

“We’re not searching for anything except people. We don’t need other worlds. We need mirrors.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“Only at dawn should a man awake from excess - at dawn agleam with red and sorrowful resolve.”
― Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky