“My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.”

“I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.”

— Oscar Wilde《The Picture of Dorian Gray》

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”

— Oscar Wilde《The Picture of Dorian Gray》

“Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.”

— William Shakespeare《Hamlet》

“The spirit that I have seen may be the devil, and the devil hath power t'assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps out of my weakness and my melancholy, as he is very potent with such spirits, abuses me to damn me.”

— William Shakespeare《Hamlet》

“It is now becoming obscured by time; and thousands, who know that Montcalm died like a hero on the plains of Abraham, have yet to learn how much he was deficient in that moral courage without which no man can be truly great.”

— James Fenimore Cooper《The Last of the Mohicans》

“Why did you give me every reason for hope, at Perros ... for honest hope, madam, for I am an honest man and I believed you to be an honest woman, when your only intention was to deceive me!”

— Gaston Leroux《The Phantom of the Opera》

“The fret of human life is but as a little island in the great ocean of eternal peace--so she told herself--and then bade that sleepless heart of hers both still its passionate beating and take courage.”

— Lucas Malet《The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance》

“There were plenty of real worries for those who wished to complain; and for those inclined to take the fervour and faith, the courage and self-denial of the time, there were plenty of occasions for happiness and hope.”

— Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr《The Belle of Bowling Green》

“His mind relieved from inquietude respecting his Sister, and his Spirits raised by the hope of soon restoring her to freedom, He now had time to give a few moments to love and to Antonia.”

— Matthew Gregory Lewis《The Monk》

“To people of her blood, liberty is everything, and they would set a town on fire to save themselves one day in prison.”

— Prosper Mérimée《Carmen》

“Disaster may come from a convulsion of nature or from the weather, from your own greed or from some man’s vanity; from fear or from uncontrolled hope.”

— Edwin Lefèvre《Reminiscences of a Stock Operator》

“Several times, the thought had come to me, that the Things had, at last, left us; but, up to this time, I had refused to entertain the idea, seriously; now, however, I began to feel that there was reason for hope.”

— William Hope Hodgson《The House on the Borderland》