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“Perseverance,” as my old rector, Hillermann, used to say, “Perseverance and diligence are better than genius and license.”
“Cynical, if you like. One is sad when one thinks about life—cynical when one sees what people make of it.”
“After all, isn’t it just as well, Bob, that they should have their bit of fun that is so important to them? It keeps them going, staves off the evil day when they will be alone. And to be alone, really alone, without illusion, that way lies madness—and suicide.”
“Only people who think they’re not superficial, are.”
“Then you were courageous,” said I. “A man is courageous only when he is also afraid.
I knew too well that all love has the desire for eternity and that therein lies its eternal torment. Nothing lasts. Nothing.
I was in that clear, overwakeful state that follows being drunk and having got the better of it again. The inhibitions were gone, the night was charged with a deep power and full of splendour, nothing could happen now, nothing false any more.
“Love,” announced Gottfried imperturbably, “is a beautiful thing. But it spoils character.”
“Tact is a tacit agreement to ignore mutual failings instead of ridding yourself of them. That is to say a despicable compromise.
“Only whatever you do, don’t lose your freedom. It is more precious than love and you only find our afterwards.
“The most degrading thing in the world for a man, Gottfried, is to be a joker.”
“The worst disease in the world, Ferdinand, is thought. It’s incurable.”
“Life is a disease, brothers, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying—a little shove toward the end.”
“Night is nature’s protest against the leprosy of civilization, Gottfried.
“Ach, the future!” I flung my cuff links on the table. “Who cares about the future these days? Why should anyone bother about that now?”
She laughed. “Men with lots of money are mostly awful, Robby.”
Only those who are constantly alone know the joy of being together.
Taking something from somebody else is one of the oldest practices of humanity—and it always affords the same satisfaction. Man is not kindly, and never will be.
“A man can’t have a row with a woman. You can be annoyed with them at the most.”
In the end we were all laughing. Not to laugh at the twentieth century is to shoot yourself. But you can’t laugh for long. It’s too much a matter for tears.
“To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There’s much too little forgetting.”
Suddenly every detail came back to me. Everything turned against me. I alone was to blame. I had been mad. I stared at the table. The blood raged in my head. I was bitter and furious with myself and at my wits’ end. It was I, I alone, that had ruined everything.
True love can’t abide people.
“Eat lots of apples, Herr Lohkamp. Apples prolong life. Every day a few apples, and you never need a doctor.”
“Balance, Herr Lohkamp, always balance—that’s the whole secret of life.”
To neglect a deal to-day is to tempt Providence. And there’s none of us can afford that.”
Come, lie down here again. Man lies down much too little. He stands and sits about all the time. It’s not good for animal comfort. Only when a man lies down is he quite at peace with himself.”
“A true idealist strives for money. Money is mental freedom. And freedom is life.”
One shouldn’t talk scornfully about money. It’s money brings many a woman a lover. Love on the other hand makes many a man avaricious. Money therefore furthers the ideal—love versus materialism.”
“We’re going to be unreasonable, Robby. To think of nothing, absolutely nothing, only of ourselves and the sun and the holidays and the sea.”
“We shall see about that,” said I. “Man is always large in his intentions. In execution not so. Therein lies his charm.”
“Submit?” said I. “Why submit? Small good that will do. Everything in life has to be paid for, twice, thrice over. Then why submit?”
The longer one lives the more fearful one gets.
Work, work, work … an abominable obsession—and always under the illusion it will be different later. And it never is different. Queer, isn’t it, that anyone should do that with his life?”
Now I suddenly saw that I could be something to someone, simply because I was there, and that that person was happy because I was with her.
A bourgeois always gets less attentive the longer he knows a woman. A cavalier, always more attentive.”
Purposes make life bourgeois.”
“A dog!” said I in surprise. “Damn it, of course, a dog! You’ve hit it. With a dog one is never lonely.”
“Yes,” I replied, suddenly embittered and numb with anger: “no one can answer that. Of course not. Nobody has an answer to misery and death. No, damn it; and what’s more one can’t do anything against it.”
“You can’t know anything beforehand. The incurable can survive the healthy. Life is a strange phenomenon.”
The fresh breath of evening came in through the open window. I sat quietly there, I had forgotten nothing of the afternoon, I knew it all quite well—but as I looked across at Pat I felt the sombre grief, that had sunk down in me like a stone, begin to be lapped about by a wild hope, change and in some strange way mingle with hope; the one became the other; the grief, the hope, the wind, the evening, and the beautiful girl between the shining mirror and the lights; yes, for a moment I had a strange intuition that just this, and in a real and profound sense, is life; and perhaps happiness
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“It gets steadily worse. Everything is getting steadily worse. And more to come.”
I knew from poker the old rule: Beginners often win.
“I’m sticking to L’Heure Bleue,” I announced. It would have been against all the mystic laws of gambling to change now.
The more we know one another, the more we misunderstand one another. And the
nearer we know one another, the more estranged we become.
No, damn it, too much blood had flowed in the world for that sort of belief in the heavenly Father.
It was curious, but the smell of coffee made me more cheerful. I knew that from the war; it was never the big things that consoled one—it was always the unimportant, the little things.
“Ach, absurd,” she replied. “In love there is nothing absurd.”
He did not love the woman any more, that was obvious—but
