In the shadow of a broken light

“The misfortune of solitary and timid people - who are timid from self-consciousness - is just that, though they have eyes and indeed open them wide, they see nothing, or see everything in a false light, as though through coloured spectacles.” - “Diary of a Superfluous Man” by Turgenev

“Open your eyes, Ambrosio, and be prudent. Hell is your lot; You are doomed to eternal perdition; Nought lies beyond your grave but a gulph of devouring flames.” - “The Monk” by Lewis 

“I can't exist by myself because I'm afraid of myself, because I'm the maker of my own evil.” - “Possession” by Andrzej Żuławski

O dangerous woman, O alluring climates! Will I also adore your snow and your hoar-frost, And can I draw from your implacable winter Pleasures keener than iron or ice?” - “Cloudy Sky” by Baudelaire

“Immersed in solitude, he would dream or read far into the night. By protracted contemplation of the same thoughts, his mind grew sharp, his vague, undeveloped ideas took on form.” - “Against Nature” by Joris-Karl Huysmans 

“I don't know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it? How can one talk to a man and not be happy in loving him! Oh, it's only that I'm not able to express it...And what beautiful things there are at every step, that even the most hopeless man must feel to be beautiful! Look at a child! Look at God's sunrise! Look at the grass, how it grows! Look at the eyes that gaze at you and love you!...” - “The Idiot” by Fyodor Dostoevsky 

“Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.” - “Paris Peasant” by Louis Aragon 

“Sometimes, only one person is missing and the whole world seems depopulated.” - Alphonse de Lamartine 

“But whom to love? To trust and treasure? Who won’t betray us in the end? And who’ll be kind enough to measure Our words and deeds as we intend?” - “Eugene Onegin” by Pushkin

“So can we be friends, sweetly Before the mystery ends? I love you more than the world can contain In its lonely and ramshackle head There’s only a shadow of me; in a manner of speaking I'm dead” - “John My Beloved” by Sufjan Stevens 

“I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own” - “The Sorrows of Young Werther” by Goethe

“I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.” - “The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoyevski 

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.” - “The Stranger” by Albert Camus

Picture : Claudio Bravo  “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” - Marcus Aurelius 

“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!” - “Call Me By Your Name” by André Aciman 

“If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you.” - “If You Forget Me” by Pablo Neruda