The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.

I trembled, and my heart failed within me; when, on looking up, I saw, by the light of the moon, the daemon at the casement.

Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doting parents: how many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what materials was I made, that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture? But I was doomed to live.

. . . the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.

He is dead who called me into being, and when I shall be no more the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish.

For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears to which these sights were the monuments and the remembrances. For an instant I dared to shake off my chains, and look around me with a free and lofty spirit; but the iron had eaten into my flesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self.

Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.