“Beloved, we are always in the wrong,Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long,Too careful even in our selfish loves:The decorative manias we obeyDie in grimaces round us every day,Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voiceWhich utters an absurd command - Rejoice. ”

“The Three Wiseman:The weather has been awful,The countryside is dreary,Marsh, jungle, rock; and echoes mock,Calling our hope unlawful; But a silly song can help alongYours ever and sincerely: At least we know for certain that we are three old sinners,that this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners,and miss our wives, our books, our dogs,but have only the vaguest idea why we are what we are.To discover how to be human nowIs the reason we follow this star.”

“So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing; but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.”

“The nightingales are sobbing inThe orchards of our mothers,And hearts that we broke long agoHave long been breaking others;Tears are round, the sea is deep:Roll them overboard and sleep. ”

“Beauty, midnight, vision dies:Let the winds of dawn that blowSoftly round your dreaming headSuch a day of welcome showEye and knocking heart may bless,Find our mortal world enough;Noons of dryness find you fedBy the involuntary powers,Nights of insult let you passWatched by every human love.”

“We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and see our illusions die.”

“Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both partners run out of goods.But if the seed of a genuine disinterested love, which is often present, is ever to develop, it is essential that we pretend to ourselves and to others that it is stronger and more developed than it is, that we are less selfish than we are. Hence the social havoc wrought by the paranoid to whom the thought of indifference is so intolerable that he divides others into two classes, those who love him for himself alone and those who hate him for the same reason.Do a paranoid a favor, like paying his hotel bill in a foreign city when his monthly check has not yet arrived, and he will take this as an expression of personal affection – the thought that you might have done it from a general sense of duty towards a fellow countryman in distress will never occur to him. So back he comes for more until your patience is exhausted, there is a row, and he departs convinced that you are his personal enemy. In this he is right to the extent that it is difficult not to hate a person who reveals to you so clearly how little you love others.”