Diana

“But were ideals, after all, meant to be realised? No, a thousand times no! We might long for the stars, but should we ever reach them? No, hope, not realization, was the most beautiful thing in life: "L'espérance, toute trompeuse qu'elle soit, sert au moins à nous mener à la fin de la vie par un chemin agréable". La Rochefoucauld said that...”
― Thomas Mann , Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

“Nuestro romanticismo, nuestra exaltación, no nos parecieron absurdos. Nos sorprendimos con hambre atrasada, el hambre espiritual, noble y pura que mueve el mundo, y por la cual existimos, y existirán miles de generaciones después de nosotros. Te reconocí mía y me declaraste tuyo. Esto es vivir; lo demás, ¿qué es?”
― Benito Perez Galdos

“...his heart had positively begun to beat to the time of suspense...The unspoken had come up, and there was a crisis - neither could have said how long it lasted - during which they were reduced, for all interchange, to looking at each other on a quite an inordinate scale.”
― Henry James, The Golden Bowl

“Words ruin one’s thoughts, paper makes them ridiculous, and even while one is still glad to get something ruined and something ridiculous down on paper, one’s memory manages to lose hold of even this ruined and ridiculous something. Paper can turn an enormity into a triviality, an absurdity.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Lime Works