Ashraqat Dawood

“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“We rightly scorn those who have no made use of their defects, who have not exploited their deficiencies, and have not been enriched by their losses, as we despise any man who does not suffer at being a man or simply at being. Hence no graver insult can be inflicted than to call someone 'happy', no greater flattery than to grant him a 'vein of melancholy'... This is because gaiety is linked to no important action and because, except for the mad, no one laughs when he is alone.”
― Émile Michel Cioran

“When shall I at last retire into solitude alone, without companions, without joy and without sorrow, with only the sacred certainty that all is a dream? When, in my rags—without desires—shall I retire contented into the mountains? When, seeing that my body is merely sickness and crime, age and death, shall I—free, fearless, and blissful—retire to the forest? When? When, oh when?”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations