She was not a woman; but she was not a man either and therefore not a human being. A solemn angel of daring with parted lips and dilated nostrils, that is what she was, an unapproachable Amazon of the realms of space beneath the canvas, high above the crowd, whose lust for her was transformed into awe.
They walked, and the long waves rolled and murmured rhythmically beside them; the fresh salty wind blew free and unobstructed in their faces, wrapped itself around their ears, and made them feel slightly numb and deliciously dizzy. They walked along in that wide, peaceful, whispering hush of the sea that gives every sound, near or far, some mysterious importance.
Recreation”, which is to say: a refreshing exercise of the organism, because it was in immediate danger of overindulging itself in the uninterrupted monotony of daily life and growing indifferent.
That was one of the advantages of his age, that he could be sure of his mastery in every moment.
He was young and had been rough with time, listening to its bad advice he had made mistakes, had compromised himself, had trespassed against good behavior and prudence, both in his words and works.
The past was only tolerable if one felt above it, instead of having to stare stupidly at it aware of one’s present impotence.
You are stronger than I. I have no armour for the struggle between us, I have only the Word, avenging weapon of the weak. Today I have availed myself of this weapon. This letter is nothing but an act of revenge – you see how honourable I am – and if any word of mine is sharp and bright and beautiful enough to strike home, to make you feel the presence of a power you do not know, to shake even a minute your robust equilibrium, I shall rejoice indeed.” – Tristan.
Democracy is eternal and human. It dignifies the human being; it respects humanity.
For happiness, he told himself, isn’t being loved; that was just a slightly nauseous satisfaction of vanity. Happiness is loving and perhaps seizing a few short illusory moments of intimacy with the object of one’s love.
Era la sonrisa de Narciso al inclinarse sobre el agua.
Shall we go away whenever life looks like turning in the slightest uncanny, or not quite normal, or even rather painful and mortifying? No, surely not. Rather stay and look matters in the face, brave them out; perhaps precisely in so doing lies a lesson for us to learn.
Yes, like watching someone flog a dead horse into obedience,” Settembrini scoffed; to which Naphta replied that since for our sin God had visited our bodies with the gruesome ignominy of rot and decay, there was no indignity in the same body’s receiving an occasional beating – which immediately brought them to the topic of cremation.
But he immediately felt he did not really want to take that step. It would lead him back, give his soul back to himself; but when one is frantic, the last thing one desires is to be oneself again.
I get an odd, intimate, and amusing sensation from having him sit on my foot and warm it with the blood-heat of his body. A pervasive feeling of sympathy and good cheer fills me, as almost invariably when in his company and looking at things from his angle.
Nothing gladdens a writer more than a thought that can become pure feeling and a feeling that can become pure thought.
Miss von Osterloh had looked through it once during an idle fifteen minutes and pronunce it “quite sophisticated,” which veredict was her euphemism for “inhumanly boring.
Hans Castorp barely attended. His mouth was open, for he could not have breathed through his nose without sniffing; he felt with dull discomfort that his heart was hammering out of time with the music; and with this combined sense of discord and disorder he was about to doze off.
A lonely, quiet person has observations and experiences that are at once both more indistinct and more penetrating than those of one more gregarious; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. Images and perceptions that others might shrug off with a glance, a laugh, or a brief conversation occupy him unduly, become profound in his silence, become significant, become experience, adventure, emotion.
It was the smile of Narcissus bending over the water mirror, the deep, enchanted, protracted smile with which he stretched out his arms to the reflection of his own beauty, an ever so slightly contorted smile – contorted by the hopelessness of his endeavor to kiss the lovely lips of his shadow – and coquettish, inquisitive and mildly pained, beguiled and beguiling.
It would of course be childish to think that the science of engineering, the rules of mechanics, had found application to organic nature;.