I can't fashion myself into a different person who might be better suited to be his friend.

If ever that door offers itself to me again, I swore, I will go in out of this dust and heat, out of this dry glitter of vanity, out of these toilsome futilities. I will go and never return. This time I will stay... I swore it and when the time came — I DIDN'T GO.

But Georg was not inclined to write of his commercial success to his friend, and were he to do so now, it would appear especially peculiar. So Georg always confined himself to relating the trivial matters that randomly arise from a disorganized memory on a reflective Sunday.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

I could have built the Pyramids with the effort it takes me to cling on to life and reason.

I have discovered your great wound. You are dying from this flower blooming on your side.

I weigh my past against my future, but find them both admirable, cannot give either the preference, and find nothing to grumble at save the injustice of Providence that has so clearly favored me.