"See what monkeys we are! Look, such is man!"
...the love of his neighbor was as deeply in him as the hatred of himself...
...human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and two religions overlap...
But the worst of it is what it is just this contentment that i cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain.
A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols...
Instead I put on my shoes ill-humoredly, discontented and disgusted with the little work I had done, and went out into the dark and foggy streets...
As though in tears and veilded, the lamps glimmered through the chill gloom and sucked their reflections slowly from the wet ground.
My regret was for the present day, for all the countless hours and days that I lost in mere passivity and that brought me nothing, not even the shocks of awakening.
-from steppenwolf by hesse
...human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and two religions overlap...
But the worst of it is what it is just this contentment that i cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain.
A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols...
Instead I put on my shoes ill-humoredly, discontented and disgusted with the little work I had done, and went out into the dark and foggy streets...
As though in tears and veilded, the lamps glimmered through the chill gloom and sucked their reflections slowly from the wet ground.
My regret was for the present day, for all the countless hours and days that I lost in mere passivity and that brought me nothing, not even the shocks of awakening.
-from steppenwolf by hesse