Henry Birnbaum

“In die Zeit, welche damals sehr langsam noch verging, sich da und dort in Teichen sammelte, oder, ihres Fließens ganz vergessend, in Tümpeln stand und den Himmel spiegelte, denn wie Tümpel waren ihre so sehr beruhigten Zustände: in diese Zeit floß jetzt der Herbst ein, und noch lange vor einer Verfärbung der Bäume mit einer Veränderung des Luftgeschmacks, und wieder lange vor dieser mit einem gewandelten Licht, wenn man aus einer schattigen Gasse um die Ecke und damit in die Sonne trat.”
― Heimito von Doderer, The Waterfalls of Slunj

“Unhappy Europe! Thou shalt perish by the moral insanity of thy children!”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

“He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness - the sense that is where we really belong.”
― Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter

“My last words about Jim shall be few. I affirm he had achieved greatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling, or rather in the hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds. I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions — and safe — and profitable — and dull. Yet you, too, in your time must have known the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone — and as short-lived, alas!”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim