Nick Lee

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

 

This quote from Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is one of the novel’s most poignant moments, capturing the essence of human yearning in the face of a dystopian society that has eradicated most forms of discomfort and suffering at the expense of individual freedom and genuine human experiences.

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“SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1944 Dearest Kitty, The sun is shining, the sky is deep blue, there’s a magnificent breeze, and I’m longing — really longing — for everything: conversation, freedom, friends, being alone. I long… to cry! I feel as if I were about to explode. I know crying would help, but I can’t cry. I’m restless. I walk from one room to another, breathe through the crack in the window frame, feel my heart beating as if to say, “Fulfill my longing at last. . .” I think spring is inside me. I feel spring awakening, I feel it in my entire body and soul. I have to force myself to act normally. I’m in a state of utter confusion, don’t know what to read, what to write, what to do. I only know that I’m longing for something. . . Yours, Anne”

― Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank

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“We believe that we can change the things around us in accordance with our desires—we believe it because otherwise we can see no favourable outcome. We do not think of the outcome which generally comes to pass and is also favourable: we do not succeed in changing things in accordance with our desires, but gradually our desires change. The situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant to us. We have failed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round it, led us beyond it, and then if we turn round to gaze into the distance of the past, we can barely see it, so imperceptible has it become.”

– Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

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His hair was already beginning to turn grey. And it seemed strange to him that he had grown so much older, so much plainer during the last few years. The shoulders on which his hands rested were warm and quivering. He felt compassion for this life, still so warm and lovely, but probably already not far from beginning to fade and wither like his own. Why did she love him so much? He always seemed to women different from what he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their imagination, whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and afterwards, when they noticed their mistake, they loved him all the same. And not one of them had been happy with him. Time passed, he had made their acquaintance, got on with them, parted, but he had never once loved; it was anything you like, but not love.

― Anton Chekhov, Lady with the Dog

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“You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Netochka Nezvanova

 

This quote from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Netochka Nezvanova” touches on a complex interplay of emotions and thoughts that many individuals experience at various points in their lives.

The character reflects on a deep, internal sense of dissatisfaction and a yearning for a different, presumably better, life path.

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