There’s something to walking with autumnal thoughts through the evening fog. One likes to compose poems at a time like that.
To such men the desperate and horrible thought has come that perhaps the whole of human life is but a bad joke, a violent and ill-fated abortion of the primal mother, a savage and dismal catastrophe of nature. To them, too, however, the other thought has come that man is perhaps not merely a half-rational animal but a child of the gods and destined to immortality.
Some day you will think of what I am going to say to you now: our friendship has no other purpose, no other reason, than to show you how utterly unlike me you are.
What is the world doing? Have new gods been discovered, new laws, new freedoms? Who cares! But up here a primrose is blossoming and bearing silver fuzz on its leaves, and the light sweet wind is singing below me in the poplars, and between my eyes and heaven a dark golden bee is hovering and humming – I care about that. It is humming the song of happiness, humming the song of eternity. Its song is my history of the world.
If a person were to concentrate all his will power on a certain end, then he would achieve it. That’s all.
Charm me. Furiously. Torment me. In detail.
Everything becomes questionable as soon as I consider it closely, everything slips away and dissolves.
We can understand one another; but each one is able to explain only himself.
Times of terror and the deepest misery may arrive, but if there is to be any happiness in this misery it can only be a spiritual happiness, related to the past in the rescue of the culture of early ages and to the future in a serene and indefatigable championship of the spirit in a time which would otherwise completely swallow up the material.
All over, people were seeking “freedom” and “happiness” somewhere behind themselves, out of the sheer fear of being reminded of their own responsibilities and being admonished to travel their own path.
Searching means having a goal, but finding means being free, being open, having no goal... because in striving for your goal there are many things you do not see, which are directly in front of your eyes.
And occasionally I became very sad over that happiness, because I was well aware it couldn’t last. I wasn’t meant to exist in the lap of plenty and ease; I needed torment and persecution. I felt that some day I would awaken from those beautiful images of love and once be alone, in the cold world of the others, where there was only solitude or struggle for me, not peace or participation.
It is extremely beautiful to belong to a woman, to give yourself. Don’t laugh if I sound foolish. But to love a woman, you see, to abandon yourself to her, to absorb her completely and feel absorbed by her, that is not what you call ‘being in love,’ which you mock a little. For me it is the road to life, the way toward the meaning of life.
If a beautiful thing were to remain beautiful for all eternity, I’d be glad, but all the same I’d look at it with a colder eye. I’d say to myself: You can look at it any time, it doesn’t have to be today. But when I know that something is perishable and can’t last forever, I look at it with a feeling not just of joy but of compassion as well.
Like a wallflower he stayed in the background waiting for someone to fetch him, someone more courageous and stronger than himself to tear him away and force him into happiness.
At that moment, when the world around him melted away, when he stood alone like a star in the heavens, he was overwhelmed by a feeling of icy despair, but he was more firmly himself than ever. That was the last shudder of his awakening, the last pains of birth. Immediately he moved on again and began to walk quickly and impatiently, no longer homewards, no longer to his father, no longer looking backwards.
Thoughts and sorrows seem to have remained on the other side of the mountains. Between tormented men and hateful deeds, a person has to think and sorrow so much! Back there it is so difficult and so desperately important to find a reason for staying alive. How else should a person go on living? Sheer misery makes one profound.
I like listening to music, but only the kind you play, completely unreserved music, the kind that makes you feel that a man is shaking heaven and hell. I believe I love that kind of music because it is amoral. Everything else is so moral that I’m looking for something that isn’t. Morality has always seemed to me insufferable.
There are many ways in which the god can make us lonely and lead us to ourselves.
No one liked him, no one was on intimate terms with him... he was a good person but took no particular trouble to please anyone.