"Of what are you thinking now?" she asked. "I am thinking of myself." "That's just what I am doing." "Are you also thinking of yourself?" "No, of you… - Jens Peter Jacobsen

The flowers growing from that soil are made of
cotton cloth; they don't even grow, they are taken from the head and stuck in the heart,
because the heart has no flowers of its own. That is exactly what I envy in the young girl:
everything about her is genuine, she does not fill the goblet of her love with the makeshift
of imagination. Do not suppose, because her love is shot through and shadowed over by
imagined pictures and again pictures in a great, teeming vagueness, that she cares more
for those images than for the earth she walks upon. It is only that all her senses and
instincts and powers are reaching out for love everywhere — everywhere, without ever
feeling weary.

...he looked so strange and absentminded; quite obviously he had just been reading a book, one could tell that from the expression in his eyes, from his hair, from the abstracted way in which he managed his hands.

She looked around with a haunted look, then sank down on her knees and prayed a long time. She repented and confessed, wildly and unrestrainedly, in growing passion, with the same fanatic self-loathing that drives the nun to scourge her naked body. She sought fervently after the most groveling expressions, intoxicating herself with self-abasement and with a humility that thirsted for degradation.
At last she rose. Her bosom heaved violently, and there was a faint light in the pale cheeks, which seemed to have grown fuller during her prayer.