Kajii Motojiro 梶井基次郎

Dante Alighieri

early 14th century · Florence

Midway on the road of our life I found myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita.

The Divine Comedy, Inferno, canto 1

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Lewis Carroll

1865 · Oxford, England · Alice asks the way of the Cheshire Cat, sitting on a bough

‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat. ‘I don’t much care where—’ said Alice. ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat. ‘—so long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation. ‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, chapter 6

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Rainer Maria Rilke

1910 · Prague · Paris

I am learning to see. I do not know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and no longer stops at the place where it used to end. I have an interior I did not know of.

Ich lerne sehen. Ich weiß nicht, woran es liegt, es geht alles tiefer in mich ein und bleibt nicht an der Stelle stehen, wo es sonst immer zu Ende war. Ich habe ein Inneres, von dem ich nicht wußte.

The novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

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Franz Kafka

1915 · Prague

When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

The novella The Metamorphosis, the first sentence

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Fyodor Dostoevsky Фёдор Достоевский

1880 · St. Petersburg, Russia · The words of the Grand Inquisitor in the story Ivan makes up and tells

the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.

The Brothers Karamazov, book 5, "The Grand Inquisitor" · in place of the original: the English translation by Constance Garnett (1912)

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