Ah, life, life, how madly, how cruelly it raced along your pulses!

Religion is passionate, reckless, destructive, idol-smashing. It's a martyr burning at the stake. It's a crown of thorns and a cross.

God, what pathetic creatures had inherited the earth, to walk a little while with their eyes upon the stars and turn their gaze too soon upon the ground that held their feet!

Time passed so much more slowly than space.

Ah, life, life, how madly, how cruelly it raced along your pulses!

The snow again. White, white net of beauty, net of dream, trapping the earth, trapping the helpless heart of life.

Here and there on the branch of an oak a congress of leaves still clung, rigid as flakes of bronze.