“And sure enough, in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. The heart that he has locked away slowly shrivels and grows hair, symbolising his own descent to beasthood.”

“We cannot live without the Earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men”

“That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face - that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem.”

“If he is weak enough to grow smaller to fit himself to his covering, then it becomes a process of gradual suicide by shrinkage of the soul.”

“It's not enough merely to exist. Every man has to seek in his own way to make his own self more noble and to relize his own true worth.”

“I will not seek it," the other replied. "It has been opened once and it is enough. And you -- are you sure that man can conquer until he has been wholly defeated? Are you sure that he can find plenitude till he has known utter despair? You will not let him despair of himself, but it may be that only in such a complete despair he finds that which cannot despair and is something other than man.”