Love must not entreat,' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.

Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.

So you find yourself surrounded by death and horror in the world, and you escape it into lust. But lust has no duration; it leaves you again in the desert.

A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginning and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree.

So you can't dance? Not at all? Not even one step? How can you say that you've taken any trouble to live when you won't even dance?

If I know what love is, it is because of you.

...As every one of us knows, there are some festivals and games in which everything goes right, and every element lifts up, animates, and exalts every other, just as there are theatrical and musical performances which without any clearly discernible cause seem to ascend miraculously to glorious climaxes and intensely felt experiences, whereas others, just as well prepared, remain no more than decent tries.