“The truth is that he wanted to draw a little comfort from gazing at the stars. There were still one or two up there, at the zenith. As always, seeing them revived him; they were distant, they were omnipotent, and at the same time they were docile to his calculations; just the contrary to human beings, always too near, so weak and yet so quarrelsome.”
—Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard
“The dog was hoping to induct the man into a taste for superfluous activity, to inculcate in him some part of his own energy; the man could have wished that the animal, by virtue of being loved, might appreciate if not abstract speculation, at least the pleasure of tasteful, gentlemanly idleness; neither of them, of course, achieved anything, but they were content nonetheless because happiness consists in seeking for an end in view rather than in attaining it; or so we are told.”
—Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard
Raisa Bruner 