Benjamin Erkenbrack

“A sensitive and honest-minded man, if he’s concerned about evil and injustice in the world, will naturally begin his campaign against them by eliminating them at their nearest source: his own person. This task will take his entire life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“We must untie these bonds that are so powerful, and henceforth love this and that, but be wedded on to ourselves. That is to say, let the other things be ours, but not joined and glued to us so strongly that they cannot be detached without tearing off our skin and some part of our flesh as well. The greatest thing in this world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“I write my literature as I write my ledger entries-carefully and indifferently. Next to the vast starry sky and the enigma of so many souls, the night of the unknown abyss and the chaos of nothing make sense-next to all this, what I write in the ledger and what I write on this paper that tells my soul are equally confined to the Rua dos Douradores, woefully little in the face of the universe's millionaire expanses.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“Analysis is good as a tool of enlightenment and civilization--to the extent that it shakes stupid preconceptions, quashes natural biases, and undermines authority. Good, in other words, to the extent that it liberates, refines, and humanizes--it makes slaves ripe for freedom. It is bad, very bad, to the extent that it prevents action, damages life at its roots, and is incapable of shaping it. Analysis can be very unappetizing, as unappetizing as death, to which it may very well be linked--a relative of the grave and its foul anatomy.”
― Thomas Mann