He Thought What A Fine Thing It

Even In A Personal Sense, After All, Art Is An Intensified Life. By Art One Is More Deeply Satisfied And More Rapidly Used Up. It Engraves On The Countenance Of Its Servant The Traces Of Imaginary And Intellectual Adventures, And Even If He Has Outwardly Existed In Cloistral Tranquility, It Leads In The Long Term To Overfastidiousness, Over-refinement, Nervous Fatigue And Overstimulation, Such As Can Seldom Result From A Life Of The Most Extravagant Passions And Pleasures.

The Books And Magazines Streamed In. He Could Buy Them All, They Piled Up Around Him And Even While He Read, The Number Of Those Still To Be Read Disturbed Him. … They Stood In Rows, Weighing Down His Life Like A Possession Which He Did Not Succeed In Subordinating To His Personality.

Nothing Is More Curious And Awkward Than The Relationship Of Two People Who Only Know Each Other With Their Eyes — Who Meet And Observe Each Other Daily, Even Hourly And Who Keep Up The Impression Of Disinterest Either Because Of Morals Or Because Of A Mental Abnormality. Between Them There Is Listlessness And Pent-up Curiosity, The Hysteria Of An Unsatisfied, Unnaturally Suppressed Need For Communion And Also A Kind Of Tense Respect. Because Man Loves And Honors Man As Long As He Is Not Able To Judge Him, And Desire Is A Product Of Lacking Knowledge.

…what Our Age Needs, What It Demands, What It Will Create For Itself, Is—terror.

If The Years Of Youth Are Experienced Slowly, While The Later Years Of Life Hurtle Past At An Ever-increasing Speed, It Must Be Habit That Causes It. We Know Full Well That The Insertion Of New Habits Or The Changing Of Old Ones Is The Only Way To Preserve Life, To Renew Our Sense Of Time, To Rejuvenate, Intensify, And Retard Our Experience Of Time - And Thereby Renew Our Sense Of Life Itself. That Is The Reason For Every Change Of Scenery And Air.