It is you I have been able to love, you alone in all the world. You can have no idea of what that means. It means a spring in the desert, a blossomin… - Hermann Hesse

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

I found some consolation or narcotic. Sometimes it was a woman, sometimes a good friend — yes, you too once helped me that way — at other times it was music or applause in the theater. But now these things no longer give me pleasure and that is why I drink. I could never sing without first having a couple of drinks, but now I can also not think, talk, live and feel tolerably well without first having a couple of drinks.

One of the aphorisms occurred to me now and I wrote it under the picture: "Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept." That was clear to me now.