Gertrud

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays

“He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina