I regard as a mortal sin not only the lying of the senses in matters of love, but also the illusion which the senses seek to creat...e where love is only partial. I say, I believe, that one must love with all of one's being, or else live, come what may, a life of complete chastity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Better extirpate the whole breed, root and branch. And this, unless the German people come to their senses, is what we propose to ...do.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul...; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If alcohol is queen, then tobacco is her consort. It's a fond companion for all occasions, a loyal friend through fair weather and... foul. People smoke to celebrate a happy moment, or to hide a bitter regret. Whether you're alone or with friends, it's a joy for all the senses. What lovelier sight is there than that double row of white cigarettes, lined up like soldiers on parade and wrapped in silver paper?... I love to touch the pack in my pocket, open it, savor the feel of the cigarette between my fingers, the paper on my lips, the taste of tobacco on my tongue. I love to watch the flame spurt up, love to watch it come closer and closer, filling me with its warmth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they... survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: "It's four o'clock ... At five I have my abyss."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The whole business of your life overwhelms you when you live alone. One's stupefied by it. To get rid of it you try to daub some o...f it off on to people who come to see you, and they hate that. To be alone trains one for death.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Construed ... as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes on you. A certai...n set of buildings, a glimpsed, smudged window-view across a schoolyard, a musty aroma sniffed behind a garage when you were a child, all of which come crowding in upon your latter-day senses--those are pungent things and vivid, even consoling. But to me they are also inert and nostalgic and unlikely to connect you to the real, to that essence art can sometimes achieve, which is permanence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the p...rocess of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one's own style and creatively adjust this to one's author.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace ...between our parents' safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let us have compassion for those under chastisement. Alas, who are we ourselves? Who am I and who are you? Whence do we come and i...s it quite certain that we did nothing before we were born? This earth is not without some resemblance to a gaol. Who knows but that man is a victim of divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so constituted that one senses punishment everywhere.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »