I wanted to go back over what I had so fleetingly experienced step by step, relishing in retrospect by virtue of that magical self-deception we call memory.
I saw how the idea, still colourless, nothing but pure and flowing heat, streamed from the furnace of his impulsive excitement like the molten metal to make a bell, then gradually, as it cooled, took...
I do not subscribe to this communal error of judging a man according to the way I perceive things.
I could never bring myself to read through contracts or arrangements destined for my scrutiny and subject to my care. In truth this was not so much a philosophical mistrust for the worldly, the mundan...
I am an impatient, temperamental reader. Anything long-winded, high-flown or gushing irritates me, so does everything that is vague and indistinct, in fact anything that unnecessarily holds the reader...
How to safeguard the deepest region of my spirit and its matter which belongs to me alone, my body, my health, my thoughts, my feelings, from the danger of being sacrificed to the deranged prejudices...
How to escape the tyrannical demands that the state and Church seek to impose on me? How to protect that unique part of my soul against enforced submission to rules and measures dictated from outside?
Hiçbir şeyin benim için gerçekleşmediği, ama yine de her şeyin bana dahil olduğu duygusunu taşıyordum yalnızca; ilgisiz kalsam da, çok derin ve çok gerçek şeyler tadıyor olmak müthiş mutluluk veren bi...
Hiçbir şey zekayı tutkulu bir kuşku kadar bileyemez. Hiçbir şey olgunlaşmamış bir zihnin bütün olanaklarını karanlıkta kaybolan bir iz kadar harekete geçiremez.
Heyecanımın içine bir aralıktan giren soğuk hava akımı gibi utanç sızmıştı.
Hermitage
Hemen şöyle düşündüm, eğer bir avans veriyorlarsa temiz bir iş olmalı, bu ateşli arazilerde mezar taşlarının bizdekinden üç kat hızlı çoğaldığını biliyordum, ama insan genç olunca ateşin ve ölümün her...
He has the sense that up to this moment his life has been a sham; he yearns to live properly, to reflect deeply and ruminate. And it is among his books he hopes to find the solution to the eternal pro...
He desires only to preserve a few memories, assemble a few thoughts, to dream more than live and patiently await death, calmly preparing for it.
From that first meeting he had loved this woman, but passionately as his feelings surged over him, following him even to his dreams, the crucial factor that would shake him to the core was still lacki...
For vanity, too, inebriates; gratitude, too, intoxicates; tenderness, too, can blissfully confuse the senses.
For the more a man restricts himself the closer he is, conversely, to infinity.
For him books are not like men, who impose themselves and burden him with their chatter, and of whom it is hard to be rid. When you don’t call for them they stay put; you can just pick up this one or...
Exalt yourself by devoting yourself to others, enrich yourself by making everyone’s destiny your own, by enduring and understanding every facet of human suffering through your pity.
Even from the abyss of horror in which we try to feel our way today, half-blind, our hearts distraught and shattered, I look up again and again to the ancient constellations that shone on my childhood...