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“We mortals fancy we inhabit the upper part of the pure earth..., as if one dwelling in the depths of the sea, should fancy his habitation to be above the waters; and when he sees the sun and stars through the waters, should fancy the sea to be the heavens. This is just our condition, we are mewed up within some hole of the earth, and fancy we live at the top of all, we take the air for the true heavens, in which the stars run their rounds. And the cause of our mistake, is our heaviness and weakness, that keep us from surmounting this thick and muddy air.”

—Phædon by Moses Mendelssohn (pp. 160-161).

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“There are souls that in their narrowness blame the whole world. But overwhelm such a soul with mercy, give it love, and it will curse what it has done, for there are so many germs of good in it.”

—Fetyukovich, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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“You got it backwards, Dill,” said Jem. “Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them.”

—Jem Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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“It’s not necessary to tell all you know. It’s not ladylike—in the second place, folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin‘ more than they do. It aggravates ’em. You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin‘ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.”

—Calpurnia, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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“before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

—Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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“Whatever she says to you, it’s your job not to let her make you mad.”

—Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”

—Maudie Atkinson, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

—Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

—Sydney Carton, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Book III Chapter XV: The Footsteps Die Out For Ever

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“every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

—A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Book I Chapter III: The Night Shadows

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“Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”

—One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marquez

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“With the passage of the days, however, the reality of life on board mattered less and less to him, and even the most recent and trivial happenings seemed worthy of nostalgia, because as the ship got farther away, his memory began to grow sad.”

—One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marquez

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“...the history of the family was a machine with unavoidable repetitions, a turning wheel that would have gone on spilling into eternity were it not for the progressive and irremediable wearing of the axle.”

—One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marquez

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“...the search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them.”

—One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marquez

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“Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart. Truly great men, I think, must feel great sorrow in this world”

—Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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“Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad.”

—Winston Smith, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

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“Reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life—the need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like. Between life and death, and between physical pleasure and physical pain, there is still a distinction, but that is all. Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down.”

—Messages in ‘The Book’, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell