From the satisfaction of desire there may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair. РAndr̩ Gide, The Counterfeiters, 1925

It has been said that figures rule the world; maybe. I am quite sure that it is figures which show us whether it is being ruled well or badly. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1830, translated

There are times when forgetting can be just as important as remembering — and even more difficult. – Harry and Joan Mier, Happiness Begins Before Breakfast

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things. – George Eliot, Felix Holt, The Radical