André’s Reviews > Either/Or: A Fragment of Life > Status Update

‘Mine’: what does this word mean? Not what belongs to me, but what I belong to, what contains my whole being, which is mine only so far as I belong to it.

"He cannot become old, for he has never been young; he cannot become young, for he has already become old; in a way he cannot die, for he has never lived; in a way he cannot live, for he is already dead; he cannot love, for love is always in the present, and he has no present time, no future, no past, and yet he is of a sympathetic nature, and he hates the world only because he loves it..."

"I am no friend of metaphors; modern literature has given me a great aversion to them; it has come almost to the point where, every time I come upon a metaphor, I am seized by an involuntary fear that its true purpose is to conceal an obscurity in the thought."