Just so! I can take joy in every leaf, every twig, every beam of light, every shadow. There isn’t a hill so barren, nor a turf-pit so square, nor a r… - Jens Peter Jacobsen

However high a mortal may set his throne, however firmly he may place upon his brow the tiara of exception that signifies genius, he can never be perfectly sure that he may not some day, like , be seized with the strange desire to go on all-fours and eat grass with the meanest beasts of the field.

Finally Thora went to her room, but Mogens remained sitting in the conservatory, miserable that she had gone. He drew black imaginings for himself, that she was dead and gone, and that he was sitting here all alone in the world and weeping over her, and then he really wept. At length he became angry at himself and stalked up and down the floor, and wanted to be sensible. There was a love, pure and noble, without any coarse, earthly passion; yes, there was, and if there was not, there was going to be one. Passion spoiled everything, and it was very ugly and unhuman. How he hated everything in human nature that was not tender and pure, fine and gentle! He had been subjugated, weighed down, tormented, by this ugly and powerful force; it had lain in his eyes and ears, it had poisoned all his thoughts.

People close their eyes to real life, they don't want to hear the 'no' it shouts at their wishes, they want to forget the deep chasm it shows them between their longing and what they long for. They want to realize their dreams. But life doesn't take dreams into account, there is not a single obstacle that can be dreamed away from reality, and so in the end they lie there wailing at the chasm, which has not changed but is the same as it has always been. But they themselves have changed for with their dreams they have goaded all their thoughts and inflamed their passions to the highest pitch. Yet the chasm has not grown narrower, and everything in them longs to cross over it. But no, always no, never anything else. And only if they had watched out for themselves in time, but now it is too late, they are unhappy (pp 31)