Beauty by mistake' — the final phase in the history of beauty. - Milan Kundera

In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood.
For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her:
the books she took out of the municipal library, and above all, the novels.

We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration

But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today's world, just as it is, contains the sum of the utility of all people of all times. Which implies: The highest morality consists in being useless.