Sage

“Do you know that you have reconciled me to myself for a long time to come now? Do you know that I shall no longer think so ill of myself as I am sometimes apt to do? Do you know that I may not despair any longer that I have committed a crime and a sin in my life, for a life like mine is a crime and a sin? And pray do not think I have exaggerated anything to you, for heaven’s sake do not think that, Nastenka, because at times I am possessed by melancholy, such utter melancholy . . . . Because when these spells come over me, I begin to think that I am incapable of ever starting to live a new, a real life, because it seems to me that I have already lost all touch, all sense of the real and the actual, because I had been selling my soul, because my nights of fantasy are now followed by moments of soberness, and they are frightening! And meanwhile, you can hear life clamouring and eddying about you in a human whirlpool, you can hear, you can see that their world has not been made to order, that it will not be shattered like a dream or a vision, that their life is ever youthful, ever rejuvenescent, and that every hour in it differs from the last, whereas timorous fancy is bleak and monotonous to the point of boredom, a slave to every shadow and notion, a slave to the first cloud that blots out the sun and wrings with distress the heart of every true man.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet i have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena