I resolved to make the fullest use of the power within me and describe as with a magic wand the circles within which all life around me should dance … - E. T. A. Hoffmann

Clad in shoes, one young shaver after another bit himself sore on the Krakatuk’s teeth and jowls without helping the princess in the least. Dentists had been summoned, and when an unfortunate suitor was being carried away half unconscious, he would sigh: “That was a hard nut to crack!

In such a dreamy mood one may find one may well wound one's feet against sharp stones, forget to doff one's hat to distinguished persons, bid one's friends good morning in the middle of the night, and dash one's head against the first front door one comes to, because one had forgot to open it; in short, the spirit wears one's body like an ill-fitting garment that is everywhere too wide, too long, too uncomfortable.

You will learn of the relationship between the various strange destinies which plunged you at one moment into a higher realm of miraculous visions and at the next into the most commonplace of worlds. It is said that the miraculous has vanished from the earth, but I do not believe it. The miracles are still there, for even if we are no longer willing to call by that name the most wonderful aspects of our daily life, because we have managed to deduce from a succession of events a law of cyclic recurrence, nevertheless there often passes through that cycle a phenomenon which puts all our wisdom to shame, and which, in our stupid obstinacy, we refuse to believe because we are unable to comprehend it.