Topic
The collection is properly ambivalent: Sophocles sees old age as a return to childhood; there are no shortcuts in evolution; Saint-Exupéry finds life meaningful only when bartered for something beyond itself. The quotes do not celebrate change for its own sake — they are more interested in whether a change is necessary, whether you are ready for it, and what you become as a result. Buck on marriage allowing for growth; Colton on friendship becoming love but never the reverse. The recurring observation is that most people resist change not because the present is good but because the alternative is unknown. These are writers who had been through enough changes to describe them without either romanticising or dreading them.
Optimist: A proponent of the doctrine that black is white
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it
Pleasure must succeed to pleasure, else past pleasure turns to pain