“It is at despair at not being able to be noble and beautiful by natural means that we have made up our faces so strangely.” ― Charles Baudelaire
“Then I could not help wondering what the watching gods thought of us, with our clever masks and our jokes. What we think of crickets, perhaps, whose singing we hear with pleasure, though some of us smash them with our heels when they venture into sight.” ― Gene Wolfe, Latro in the Mist
“I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate” ― Robert Graves, I, Claudius
“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” ― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets