“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”

“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》

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

— William Shakespeare《Hamlet》

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

— Oscar Wilde《De Profundis》

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

— William Shakespeare《Hamlet》

“Call me Ishmael.”

— Herman Melville《Moby-Dick》

“The friend praying at her side was forgotten, the world had vanished, every law of reason was annihilated, all knowledge was out of her mind--every hard-won conquest of human empiricism was effaced.”

— Wilhelmine von Hillern《On the Cross: A Romance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau》

“But nature itself, she thought, would be no better than a vast blank, if the mind of the observer did not supply it with an animating soul.”

— William Godwin《Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman》

“In any case such a monster must of necessity be in our scheme of things an anomaly and an intruder, whose extirpation forms a primary duty with every man not an enemy to the world's life, health, and sanity.”

— H. P. Lovecraft《The Shunned House》

“So that when you are in harmony with nature in this respect, you will be elated with some reason; for you will be elated at some good of your own.”

— Epictetus《The Enchiridion》

“Time and time again he tried for the snow-white throat, where life bubbled near to the surface, and each time and every time Spitz slashed him and got away.”

— Jack London《The Call of the Wild》

“Vain man may as well attempt to stop the course of nature, as to do ample justice to this wonderful man!”

— Timothy Dexter《A Pickle for the Knowing Ones》

“He had acknowledged that he himself was not devoid of blame; the woman, he had avowed, had corrupted him body and soul, and Villiers felt that this man, once his friend, had been an actor in scenes evil beyond the power of words.”

— Arthur Machen《The Great God Pan》