That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.

And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?

Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people's songs.

No deep and strong feeling, such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim.

But the division in him was a sorrow and a torment, and he became accustomed to it only as one gets used to an unhealed and frequently reopened wound.

You are eternity's hostage A captive of mine.

Everything established, settled, everything to do with home and order and the common ground, has crumbled into dust and has been swept away in the general upheaval and reorganization of the whole of society. The whole human way of life has been destroyed and ruined. All that's left is the bare, shivering human soul, stripped to the last shred, the naked force of the human psyche for which nothing has changed because it was always cold and shivering and reaching out to its nearest neighbor, as cold and lonely as itself.