Time drowns in the unmeasured monotony of space. Where uniformity reigns, movement from point to point is no longer movement; and where movement is n… - Thomas Mann

Denn das Glück, sagte er sich, ist nicht, geliebt zu werden; das ist mit Ekel gemischte Genugtuung für die Eitelkeit. Das Glück ist, zu lieben und vielleicht kleine, trügerische Annäherungen an den geliebten Gegenstand zu erhaschen.

Is not life in itself a thing of goodness, irrespective of whether the course it takes for us can be called a 'happy' one?

Hidden away amongst Aschenbach's writing was a passage directly asserting that nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite poverty, loneliness, bodily weakness, vice and passion and a thousand inhibitions, that they have come into being at all. But this was more than an observation, it was an experience, it was positively the formula of his life and his fame, the key to his work.