Elena

“Yes, I laugh at all mankind, and the imposition that they dare to practice when they talk of hearts. I laugh at human passions and human cares, vice and virtue, religion and impiety; they are all the result of petty localities, and artificial situation. One physical want, one severe and abrupt lesson from the colorless and shriveled lip of necessity, is worth all the logic of the empty wretches who have presumed to prate it, from Zeno down to Burgersdicius. It silences in a second all the feeble sophistry of conventional life, and ascetical passion.”
― Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer

“There is no error more absurd, and yet more rooted in the heart of man, than the belief that his sufferings will promote his spiritual safety.”
― Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer

“in the days when the world begins to bleach and shrivel, and the sun is blotched with death. Socialist and Individualist, they'll all be a little dirt lodged deep in the granite wrinkles of the globe's countenance.”
― Clark Ashton Smith

“What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines