For some reason, cats are usually addressed familiarly, though no cat has ever drunk bruderschaft with anyone.
Not causing trouble, not touching anything, fixing the primus.
Why try to pursue what is completed?
The darkness that had come in from the Mediterranean covered the city so detested by the procurator...
A dog’s spirit dies hard.
There is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason.
Literature has become my life.
Once in 1919, when I was traveling at night by train, I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of the newspaper who published the story.
Obedient to constraint, I was compelled to submit.
This twenty-year-old boy was distinguished from childhood by strange qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him, and he went and sold her to a brothel...
Who ever told you there is no such thing in the world as real, true, everlasting love? May the liar have his despicable tongue cut out!
What would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? After all, shadows are cast by objects and people. There is the shadow of my sword. But there are also shadows of trees and living creatures. Would you like to denude the earth of all the trees and all the living beings in order to satisfy your fantasy of rejoicing in the naked light?
How sad, ye Gods, how sad the world is at evening, how mysterious the mists over the swamps! You will know it when you have wandered astray in those mists, when you have suffered greatly before dying, when you have walked through the world carrying an unbearable burden. You know it too when you are weary and ready to leave this earth without regret; its mists; its swamps and its rivers; ready to give yourself into the arms of death with a light heart, knowing that death alone can comfort you.
I don’t have any special talents, just an ordinary desire to live like a human being.
Why do smart people exist, if not to figure out convoluted problems?
Clever people have been pointing out for a long time that happiness is like good health: when it’s there, you don’t notice it. But when the years have passed, how you do remember happiness, oh, how you do remember it!
She had a passion for all people who did anything to perfection.
That’s really bad,” concluded the host, “say what you will, but there’s something evil lurking in men who avoid wine, games, the society of delightful women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate those around them. True, exceptions are possible. Among those who have sat down with me at the banqueting table, there have sometimes been some astonishing scoundrels! And so, I’m listening to why you’re here.
You spoke your words as though you denied the very existence of the shadows or of evil. Think, now: where would your good be if there were no evil and what would the world look like without shadow?
What point is there in dying in a ward, listening to the moans and rasps of the terminally ill? Wouldn’t it be better to spend the twenty-seven thousand on a banquet, then, after taking poison, depart for the other world to the sound of violins, surrounded by intoxicated beautiful women and dashing friends?