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

“Tell me how the new world can be as familiar as my home and yet my home as strange as the new world.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The New Life

“...a new force given to individual initiatives, a need to smash things up, to leap over fences, to break laws – all this, at the start, made the war acceptable. It was confused with freedom, and discipline was then accepted in the belief that it was lacking.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“Sentía que dentro del pecho le pataleaba la emoción, como un ser vivo más grande que el seno que lo contiene, y se desahogaba con risas frenéticas, o con repentinos y ardientes chorretazos de lágrimas. Ni era posible decir si aquello era en ambos felicidad o una pena lacerante, porque uno y otro se sentían como heridos por un aguijón que les llegaba al alma, y atormentados por el deseo de un más allá.”
― Benito Perez Galdos,, Tristana