If no one else, the dying must notice how unreal, how full of pretense, is all that we accomplish here, where nothing is allowed to be itself.

They all have tired mouths and bright seamless souls. And a longing (as for sin) sometimes haunts their dreams. They are almost all alike; in God's gardens they keep still, like many, many intervals in his might and melody. Only when they spread their wings are they wakers of a wind: as if God with his broad sculptor- hands leafed through the pages in the dark book of the beginning.

And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses - would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories?

And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.

There is time only to work slowly There is no time not to love

Of all my books, I find only a few indispensible.

Earth, my dearest, oh believe me, you no longer need your springtimes to win me over...Unspeakably, I have belonged to you, from the flush.