The bourgeois today burns as heretics and hangs as criminals those to whom he erects monuments tomorrow.

He was taught by the river. Incessantly, he learned from it. Most of all, he learned from it to listen, to pay close attention with a quiet heart, with a waiting, opened soul, without passion, without a wish, without judgement, without an opinion.

One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error.

In every truth, the opposite is equally true. For example, a truth can only be expressed and enveloped in words if it is onesided.

He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new.

When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so-called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my rusty lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the most devilish pain burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. - Harry Haller

It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.