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Today, it is a commonplace that one person may enslave another by excessive love, laced with appeals to gratitude, compassion, and duty, and that the loved one may actually feel those sentiments — love, too, of a sort — while at the same time wanting nothing more than to be out the door.
I let it happen, powerless, defenceless, yet subconsciously ashamed at the thought of being loved so infinitely, while for my part feeling nothing but shy confusion, an embarrassed thrill.
On the night of February 23, 1942, he wrote a note of thanks to the people of Brazil and a salute to his friends: “May it be granted them yet to see the dawn after the long night! I, all too impatient, go on before.” Then he and Lotte took an overdose of barbiturates. The next morning, they were found dead, in their bed, holding hands.
he was merely one of those embarrassingly convivial souls who collect acquaintances as assiduously as children collect postage-stamps and are therefore peculiarly proud of every fresh addition to their collection.
One should not always let the wish be father to the thought, I protested with some firmness.
On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it.
It’s a very odd story, and yet it may serve to show that courage is often nothing but inverted weakness.
I realized that there was no point in denying oneself a pleasure because it was denied another, in refusing to allow oneself to be happy because someone else was unhappy.
But it was never the suffering that one pictured to oneself, that one imagined, that stunned and devastated one; it was only what one had seen in the flesh with eyes of compassion, that stirred and shattered one.
It all began with that sudden pull at the reins, which was, so to speak, the first symptom of the strange poisoning of my spirit by pity.
Cease to be apathetic, indifferent! Exalt yourself by devoting yourself to others, enrich yourself by making everyone’s destiny your own, by enduring and understanding every facet of human suffering through your pity.
the thought that the chauffeur should, solely on my account, have to dress again at half-past eleven and get out the car, which had already been put away in the garage, was really distressing to me. (All this consideration for, entering into the feelings of, others was entirely novel to me; I had only acquired the habit during these last few weeks.)
For the first time I began to perceive that true sympathy cannot be switched on and off like an electric current, that anyone who identifies himself with the fate of another is robbed to some extent of his own freedom.
One should never create precedents; a habit was liable to become a duty, and I was not going to tie myself down.
as I stood facing him, was profoundly disappointing. It is true that whenever we have been told a great many interesting things about a person whom we have not yet met, our visual fantasy conjures up a picture of him beforehand, dipping liberally into the storehouse of our most precious and most romantic memories. In order to picture to myself a talented doctor such as Kekesfalva had described to me, I had confined my imagination to those characteristics which the average producer and theatrical wig-maker exploit to present the typical stage doctor: a spiritualized countenance, a keen and
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petty spirits are more ready to forgive a prince the most fabulous wealth rather than a fellow-sufferer beneath the same yoke the smallest degree of freedom.
Even if I had gone further than in all honesty I should have done, my lies, those lies born of pity, had made her happy; and to make a person happy could never be a crime.
But why shouldn’t one be foolish once in a while? Why not for once let oneself be thoroughly taken in?’
For the first time in my life I began to realize that it is not evil and brutality, but nearly always weakness, that is to blame for the worst things that happen in this world.
if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings.
But he who is loved without reciprocating that love, is lost beyond redemption; for it is not in his power to set a limit to the other’s passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another’s desire.
It is in vain that you try not to think of her who thinks always of you, in vain that you seek to escape, for you no longer dwell in yourself, but in her.
was gruesomely aware of the monstrous crime that I should, against my will, be committing if, incapable though I was of returning her love, I did not at least make some show of responding to it.
my consternation and dismay at being loved so desperately were boundless.
If I wrote to her, she would write back to me, and if I did not answer, she would want to know why. She would always be wanting something of me, every day, every day!
In the very depths of my consciousness, in the secret places of my mind, I was thinking only of that one thing of which I did not want to think, of which I ought not to have been thinking.
As a rule, until dawning purpose and final action follow on vague desire, the mind hovers, vacillates, swings back and forth between countless shades of emotion, and it is one of the most secret pleasures of the heart to try to dally with resolves before putting them into effect.
Now, however, everything has descended upon me with dream-like rapidity, and just as villages and streets, trees and meadows, fell away in the wake of the throbbing car into nothingness, finally and beyond recall, so now was all that had hitherto been my daily life, the barracks, my career, my comrades, the Kekesfalvas, the Schloss, my rooms, the riding-school, the whole of my apparently secure and well-regulated existence, rushing away at full speed. One single hour had changed the whole of my world.
In all our actions vanity is, after all, one of the most powerful driving forces, and weak natures in particular succumb to the temptation to do something which, viewed superficially, makes them appear strong, courageous and resolute.
A real man is much more likely to be dismayed at realizing that a woman has lost her heart to him when he can’t reciprocate her feelings.
I enjoyed the rippling of her fingers over my skin, the tingling of my nerves — I let it happen, powerless, defenceless, yet subconsciously ashamed
I had yielded myself up. I no longer belonged to myself.
could no longer understand how it was that I had tortured myself when everything, after all, was so simple. You just sat together and held hands, there was no need for you to force yourselves or to hide your real feelings, you showed that you were fond of one another, you did not struggle against your tender feelings, you accepted the other’s love for you without shame and with sheer gratitude.
But it is an absurdly inconsequential characteristic of suicides that, ten minutes before they are to become mangled corpses, they yield to the vanity of trying to make as tidy an exit from life as possible (from that life of which they will no longer know anything); that they shave themselves and put on clean underlinen (for whom?) before putting a bullet through their heads: indeed, I even remember hearing of a woman who made up her face and had her hair waved and scented with the most expensive perfume before throwing herself from the fourth floor of a building.
Justice in some mysterious way makes up for violence.
How slow the postmistress was, what a lot of questions she asked: name and address of sender, one formality after another!
But ever since that moment I have realized afresh that no guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.
