Juliano Dutra

“There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one’s soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one’s own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth;”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Uncensored 13 Chapter Version + The Revised 20 Chapter Version

“In the first half of the century, the most popular of all the books written about poverty was, however, not an earnest social tract, but The Mysteries of Paris. It was written by Eugène Sue (1804–57), who served as a military surgeon in the French invasion of Spain in 1823, and was present at the Battle of Navarino in 1827 during the Greek War of Independence. Sue wrote Romantic, sensationalist stories with subjects featuring pirates and bandits, and in his novel Mathilde (1841) coined the saying ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’.”
― Richard J. Evans, The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815-1914

“Incapable of systematic work, Wilhelm travelled so much that he was popularly known as the Reisekaiser, the ‘travelling emperor’. In August 1894 one newspaper calculated that he had spent 199 out of the previous 365 days on the move. There was, contemporaries observed, something about him that was ‘not quite normal’. On cruises he made elderly generals perform gymnastics and on one occasion ran around them as they did so, cutting through their braces so their trousers fell down. On another occasion he got one rather fat courtier to make howling noises dressed up as a poodle; on a third occasion he forced the head of the Military Cabinet, Count Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler (1853–1908), to dress up as a ballerina and perform before the court; the unfortunate general had a heart attack in the middle of a pirouette and died on the spot.”
― Richard J. Evans, The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815-1914

“My hometown was full of heroes and villains, honest people who knew the beauty of truth and others whose beauty was a lie.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life