I saw that something remained of the fools’ play, the death dance of human life, something lasting: works of art. They too will probably perish some day; they’ll burn or crumble or be destroyed. Still, they outlast many human lives; they form a silent empire of images and relics beyond the fleeting moment. To work at that seems good and comforting to me, because it almost succeeds in making the transitory eternal.
People who don’t run after the herd are rare everywhere.
We are created and resurrected with our dreams.
The fact that the student enjoyed his happiness only in a dream should not diminish it, for most people experience their dreams more intensely than their lives.
My gift and uniqueness consist in this: I store images of the external world in my head, and out of them I am able to produce new images and arrangements only for myself. I can conceive the entire world in my mind. That is, I can create it anew.
Words do not express thoughts very well; everything immediately becomes a little different, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.
However, one can study someone very closely and then one can often know almost exactly what he thinks or feels and then one can also anticipate what he will do the next moment. It’s simple enough, only people don’t know it.
There was nothing to be made of us intellectuals. We were a superfluous, irresponsible lot of talented chatterboxes for whom reality had no meaning.
And I don’t want to live like a fleeting shadow, a consumptive, no. I want to live genuinely, with the true warmth and in full bloom. I want to be a gay worshipper in the temple of the muses rather than a mere hunted prey. Each day I ask in my prayers for the ability to preserve my own inner world rather than become stifled, so that the sweet poison, which I see thousands of people sipping, may not consume me as well.
A man who can understand Buddha and has an intuition of the heaven and hell of humanity ought not to live in a world ruled by “common sense” and democracy and bourgeois standards.
There was nothing to charm or tempt me. Everything was old, withered, grey, limp and spent, and stank of staleness and decay. Dear God, how was it possible? How had I, with the wings of youth and poetry, come to this? Art and travel and the glow of ideals – and now this! How had this paralysis of hatred against myself and everyone else, this obstruction of all feeling, this mud-hell of an empty heart and despair crept over me so softly and so slowly?
Only the ideas that we really live have any value. You have known that your ‘permitted’ world was only half of the world and you have tried to subjugate the second half after the manner of the priests and teachers. It will not be to your benefit! It benefits no one once he has begun to think!
Deeply he felt, more deeply than ever before, in this hour, the indestructibility of every life, the eternity of every moment.
Wissen kann man mitteilen, Weisheit aber nicht. Man kann sie finden, man kann sie leben, man kann von ihr getragen werden, man kann mit ihr Wunder tun, aber sagen und lehren kann man sie nicht.
Youth is the hardest time in life. One seldom hears of an old person committing suicide.
But where we have given of our love and respect not from habit but of our own free will, where we have been children and friends from our inmost heart, it is a bitter and terrible moment when we suddenly recognize that our natural tendency is bound to lead us away from the people we love.
I don’t write literature but simply confessions, just as a drowning man or a man dying of poisoning no longer worries about the state of his hair or the modulation of his voice, but instead simply lets out a scream.
The impetus that makes you fly is the great store of humanity that each of us possesses. It’s the feeling of interconnectedness with the roots of all power, but we soon get alarmed by it! It’s damned dangerous! And so most people are glad to give up flying; they prefer walking on the sidewalk, following the rules and regulations.
When something precious and irretrievable is lost, we have the feeling of having awakened from a dream.
What would love be without secrecy? What would love be without risk?