Art is contemplation of the world in a state of grace and imaginatively reflecting that subjective understanding.

Love is stronger than violence.

Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike.

Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell.

The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life.

...and the vessel was not full, his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace, his heart was not still.

...Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts.