Vår Aunevik

“For a year or two past my 'publisher,' falsely so called, has been writing from time to time to ask what disposition should be made of the copies of 'A Week on the Concord and the Merrimack Rivers' still on hand, and at last suggesting that he had use for the room they occupied in his cellar. So I had them all sent to me here, and they have arrived to-day by express, filling the man's wagon,--706 copies out of an edition of 1000 which I bought of Munroe four years ago and have been ever since paying for, and have not quite paid for yet. The wares are sent to me at last, and I have an opportunity to examine my purchase. They are something more substantial than fame, as my back knows, which has borne them up two flights of stairs to a place similar to that to which they trace their origin. Of the remaining two hundred and ninety, seventy-five were given away, the rest sold. I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.
Is it not well that the author should behold the fruits of his labor?”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It
always made me want to do just the opposite.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“It is not the real punishment. The only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, lies in the recognition of sin by conscience.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov