I carried shadows along with me that were unknown to the world of my home. I had had plenty of secrets in the past, and plenty of anxiety, but that was all a game and a joke in comparison with what I was carrying with me into these rooms today. Fate was hounding me, hands were reaching out at me from which my mother couldn't protect me, of which she shouldn't even learn.
. . .
They said that fellows with that mark were weird, and so they were. People with courage and character always seem weird to other people. It was very uncomfortable to have a race of fearless, weird people running around, so now they hung a nickname on that race and made up a story about it in order to take revenge on it, in order to be compensated to some extent for all the fear they had undergone.
. . .
I lived in those dreams — I was always a heavy dreamer — more than in real life; those shadows consumed my strength and life.
. . .
There are things you're afraid of; there are also people you're afraid of. And there should never be any. No, no one should ever be afraid of people.
. . .
Oh, I know it today: nothing in the world is more repugnant to a man than following the path that leads him to himself!
. . .
The insight that my problem was a problem of all mankind, a problem of all life and thought, suddenly passed over me like a sacred shadow; and fear and reverence overpowered me when I saw and suddenly felt how profoundly my very own personal life and opinions shared in the eternal stream of great ideas. The insight was not joyous, even though it somehow made me happy by confirming my opinions. It was tough and tasted raw, because it contained a note of responsibility, of the necessity to cease being a child and to stand on my own feet.
. . .
I see that you think more than you can express. But, if that's the case, you must also know that you have never fully lived out your thoughts, and that isn't good. Only the thoughts that we live out have any value.
. . .
Therefore each of us must discover for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden — forbidden to him. It's possible for someone never to do any forbidden thing, and yet be a scoundrel. And vice versa. — Actually, it's merely a question of convenience! Whoever is too comfort-loving to do his own thinking and be his own judge simply adapts to the pre-existing negative commandments. It's easy for him. Others feel commandments of their own within themselves; for them things aren't forbidden which every respectable man does daily, and other things are permissible for them which are normally tabooed. Everyone must stand on his own feet.
. . .
"We're talking too much," he said with unaccustomed gravity. "Smart talk has no value, none at all. It just leads you away from yourself. To depart from yourself is a sin. A person must be able to crawl away into himself completely, like a turtle."
. . .
But, despite everything, it was almost a pleasure to suffer those torments. I had crawled through life blindly and dully for so long, my heart had kept silent and had sat, impoverished, in a corner for so long, that even these self-accusations, this horror, this whole ghastly emotion in my soul was welcome. After all, it was an emotion, flames were still rising, it showed that my heart was still alive! In a confused way, in the midst of my misery I felt something like liberation and springtime.
. . .
And while I was sitting among pools of beer at dirty tables in cheap taverns, entertaining and often frightening my friends with unusually cynical remarks, deep in my heart I revered everything I was mocking, and in my mind I was weeping on my knees before my soul, my past, my mother, and God.
. . .
I did what I had to do, because otherwise I simply had no idea what to do with myself. I was afraid of being alone for long periods; I stood in fear of the numerous tender, shy, warm impulses toward which I constantly felt responsive; I stood in fear of the tender thoughts of love that came to me so frequently.
. . .
But now I had something to love and adore, I once again had an ideal; life was once again filled with presentiments and a mysterious, variegated twilight glow. And that made me insensitive to scorn. Once more I felt at home with myself, although only as a slave and servant of a venerated image.
. . .
All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?
. . .
But none of these dreams, none of these thoughts obeyed me; I couldn't summon any of them, I couldn't lend color to any of them at will. They came and took me over; I was governed by them, they lived my life.
. . .
I like music very much, I think, because it's so unconcerned with morality. Everything else is moralistic, and I'm looking for something that isn't.
. . .
The contemplation of such shapes, the surrender to irrational, confused, rare natural forms, engenders in us a feeling that our own mind is in harmony with the will that gave rise to these forms — we soon feel the temptation to look on them as our own caprices, as our own creations — we see the borderline between us and nature tremble and dissolve, and we become acquainted with the mood in which we don't know whether the images on our retina are coming from external impressions or from within us. In no other way than through this practice do we discover so simply and easily how very creative we are, how much our soul always participates in the perpetual creation of the world.
. . .
We always limit our personality much too narrowly! We always count as pertaining to our person only what we recognize as individual differences that set us apart. But we're comprised of everything that comprises the world, each of us, and just as our body bears within it the lines of evolutionary descent all the way back to the fish and even much farther beyond that, in the same way our soul contains everything that has ever dwelt in human souls.
. . .
There's a big difference between merely carrying the world inside you and knowing that you do!
. . .
Now, each one of them has the potentiality of becoming a human being, but only when he senses that potential, when he even learns to be conscious of it to some degree, does that potential belong to him.
. . .
Among all my dreams that obscure dream of love was the most loyal.
. . .
When we hate a person, what we hate in his image is something inside ourselves. Whatever isn't inside us can't excite us.
. . .
And we're not pigs, as you think. We're human beings. We create gods and fight with them, and they bless us.
. . .
But in situations where we have made the gift of our love and veneration, not out of long familiarity but out of our most personal impulses; where we have been disciples and friends from the depth of our heart — in such cases it's a bitter and frightening moment when we suddenly seem to realize that the principal current within us is determined to carry us away from the person we love.
. . .
He had never heard me talk like that, and at the very moment I myself realized in a flash with shame and fright that the arrow I had shot at him, striking him to the heart, had been taken from his own arsenal — that I had now maliciously hurled at him in a more pointed form his own self-reproaches, which I had occasionally heard him utter ironically.
. . .
I had often played with images of the future, I had dreamt of roles that might be meant for me, as a poet, perhaps, or as a prophet, or as a painter, or whatever else. That was all meaningless. I didn't exist to write poetry, to preach sermons, to paint pictures; neither I nor anyone else existed for that purpose. All of that merely happened to a person along the way. Everyone had only one true vocation: to find himself.
. . .
"No one ever arrives home," she said amiably. "But when the paths of friends meet, the whole world looks like home for a while."
. . .
It's always difficult to be born. As you know, the bird must make an effort to break out of the egg. Think back and ask: Was the path really that difficult? Merely difficult? Wasn't it also beautiful? Could you have thought of a more beautiful or easier one?
. . .
"Love ought not to make requests," she said, "but shouldn't make demands, either. Love must have the strength to reach certainty for itself. Then it no longer undergoes the power of attraction, but exerts it."
. . .
He had loved and, by doing so, had found himself. But most people love in order to lose themselves.
