...Music turns the handle of terror, tremulousness, dread, and pain and awakens that infinite yearning that is the very essence of romanticism. - 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!

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 for my delight.

"Know, then," said he, "that I myself am the destiny — the demon, as thou sayest, by whom I am persecuted and destroyed, that my conscience is loaded with guilt, nay, with the stain of a shameful, infamous, and mortal crime,"