27
" Act, think, do, according to your truth, according to who you are, and who you want to be. Congruency matters. How can you escape when you betray your heart, your passion, your needs and your mind? There is no hiding. It will eat you alive. Even if it is difficult, even if it may seem impossible, stay true to yourself. No one can live this life but you. If you live your life solely for others but never for yourself, you will impair your ability to truly help others. Whatever is within us always seeps out through our words, actions and behaviour. If we sabotage ourselves by doing what we may think we are supposed to, according to others but not according to our own hearts, what will our children and loved ones think? What are we showing the world when we betray our very nature? Will others think this is an act of love or self-love? Worse still if others then attempt to mimic it and do the same. Would you want your child deeply unhappy because they were following what they thought they had to, what was expected? If you wouldn't wish that for your child, then don't wish it for yourself either. Be just as loving and caring to yourself as you would be to those you love the most. Learn to love yourself enough to allow yourself to dream, explore, follow your passions, and even risk failure. Follow the truths that are carried within the heart of your soul. "
35
" It is the custom on the stage: in all good, murderous melodramas: to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky, well-cured bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; and, in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life alike in danger; drawing forth a dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and, just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard: and we are straightway transported to the great hall of the castle: where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts of places from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company, carolling perpetually.
Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as they would seem at first sight. The transitions in real life from well-spread boards to death-beds, and from mourning weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling; only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive lookers-on; which makes a vast difference. The actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and preposterous. "
― Charles Dickens , Oliver Twist