“I find that with me low spirits and feeble health come and go together. The last two or three months I have had frequent attacks of the blues. They generally are upon me or within me when I am somewhat out of order in bowels, throat, or head.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (18221893)
“Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You cant deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.”
—Cesare Pavese (19081950)
“There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime.”
—Victor Hugo (18021885)