Book: Steppenwolf

Goodbye is a wonderful thing, it softens.

<...> nobody wants to avoid the next war ...

But what was needed was not knowledge, not understanding - not that I so desperately craved - but impressions, a decision, a push and a jump.

Well, I want to show you that there was no need to try hard. I understand you that way.

Well, thank God, I'm not your mother.

I apologize to you and your wife - tell her that I am schizophrenic. And at the same time, let me take my leave.

Oh my God, I thought all the time, why are we straining so hard?

<...> the owners did not even think that such a fiend of hell could sit in front of them, but this was exactly the case, this fiend of hell was me.

Without self-love, love for one's neighbor is impossible.

You can't be different than you are.

I always have to take a deep breath of it as I go? As the smell of wax, which is smeared floor, and a faint flavor of turpentine together with the mahogany, washed leaves and all the way create fragrance, create the highest expression of bourgeois cleanliness, thoroughness and accuracy of duty and faithfulness in the small. Don't know who lives here, but behind that glass door should be a Paradise of purity, of the petty bourgeoisie without a single speck of dust, a Paradise of order and timidly touching devotion to the little habits and responsibilities.

During this period I became more and more aware that the disease of this sufferer is rooted not in some vices of his nature, but, on the contrary, in the great wealth of his powers and inclinations under harmony.

The ability to think man has only to a small extent, and even the most spiritual and the most learned person sees the world and himself always through the glasses are very naive, simplify, false formulas and especially yourself! It is, apparently, an innate need of every person are triggered completely unconsciously, to present oneself a certain unity. What would be common and which would be hard hit neither endured this illusion, she comes to life again and again.

If I say "above" or "below", then this is a statement that requires explanation, since an above and a below exist only in thought, only as abstractions. The world itself knows neither top nor bottom.