“My resolve to die was not the whim of an hour. It was the ripe, sound fruit that had slowly grown to full size, lightly rocked by the winds of fate whose next breath would bring it to the ground. ”

“my path had led me at that time into a new life, which had now grown old and is dead”

“Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate this very hour, and he stopped suffering.”

“Oh, if I had had a friend at this moment, a friend in an attic room, dreaming by candlelight and with a violin lying ready at his hand! How I should have slipped up to him in his quiet hour, noiselessly climbing the winding stair to take him by surprise, and then with talk and music we should have held heavenly festival throughout the night!”

“RainSoft rain, summer rainWhispers from bushes, whispers from trees.Oh, how lovely and full of blessingTo dream and be satisfied.I was so long in the outer brightness,I am not used to this upheaval:Being at home in my own soul,Never to be led elsewhere.I want nothing, I long for nothing,I hum gently the sounds of childhood,And I reach home astoundedIn the warm beauty of dreams.Heart, how torn you are,How blessed to plow down blindly,To think nothing, to know nothing,Only to breathe, only to feel.”

“The “music of decline” had sounded, as in that wonderful Chinese fable; like a thrumming bass on the organ its reverberations faded slowly out over decades; its throbbing could be heard in the corruption of the schools, periodicals, and universities, in melancholia and insanity among those artists and critics who could still be taken seriously; it raged as untrammeled and amateurish overproduction in all the arts.”

“Seeking nothing, emulating nothing, breathing gently, he moved in an atmosphere of imperishable calm, impresihable light, inviolable peace.”