Arlian

“If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“Hatsuyo ridiculed the movements of people like the socialists, or at best viewed them coolly. "I can't," she said, "hold a fixed philosophy about human society. What I do is gather people around me who feel like I do and live the kind of life that feels right. That is the kind of life that is most realistic and has the most meaning. One member of our group called that view "escapism", but I did not agree. I, too, believed that it was impossible to change the existing society into one that would be FOR the benefit of all; neither could I espouse any given ideal for society.”
― Fumiko Kaneko, The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman

“It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby