In the fusion of single cells . . . the two cells' nuclei totally merge with each other, forming the new creature, and only what is inessential, at t… - Lou Andreas-Salomé

Bear in mind that the Narcissus of legend gazed, not at a man-made mirror, but at the mirror of Nature [a pool of water]. Perhaps it was not just himself that he beheld in the mirror, but himself as if he were still All: would he not otherwise have fled, instead of lingering before it? And does not melancholy dwell next to enchantment upon his face? Only the poet can make a whole picture of this unity of joy and sorrow, departure from self and absorption in self, devotion and self-assertion.

Conversing with Nietzsche is uncommonly lovely . . . The content of a conversation of ours really exists in what is not quite spoken but emerges from our each approaching the other half way. He gave me his hand and said earnestly and with feeling, "Never forget that it would be a calamity if you did not carve a memorial to your full innermost mind in the time left to you."

[Speaking of Rilke] Abandoning himself in everything, and thereby making himself superfluous, the benefactor becomes at once the petitioner, the recipients become donors, and he hides in their secure existence. And were this loner, who was isolated in death, still with us, I believe he would feel most immediately at home in the deepest anonymity of his work’s effects— there in the no longer audible processes of man’s union with the cosmos, where his form is allowed to fade and no longer requires visibility or the boundaries of self. Restored to a stronger presence: standing there, in deep peace, he too a nameless one among the nameless. -- Kindle p. 96