With the most cheerful demeanour she said the most melancholy things, and on the other hand uttered the most laughable jests with an air of deep distress. She has taken to books for refuge, which I fear will be her ruin.
Now one will inevitably raise the question: How then do we conquer self-centeredness? How do we get away from this thing that we call self-centeredness? How can we live in this universe with a balance and with a type of perspective that keeps us going smoothly and we are not too absorbed in self? How do we do it?
Does man think because he has found that thinking pays?
Does he bring his children up because he has found it pays?
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.
What we talked about will have to remain a secret between him and me. I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust.
"A person fucks himself up so much," Colonel Aureliano Buendía said, "Fucks himself up so much just so that six weak fairies can kill him and he can't do anything about it."
One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocent self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.
All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; 'tis like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
This disposition to shorten our words, by retrenching the vowels, is nothing else but a tendency to lapse into the barbarity of those northern nations from whom we are descended, and whose languages all labour under the same defect.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.