Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.
How foolish to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.
For although in a certain sense and for light-minded persons non-existent things can be more easily and irresponsibly represented in words than existing things, for the serious and conscientious historian it is just the reverse.
Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity.
Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense.
Every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge.
Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again.
Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
Each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden — forbidden for him. It’s possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard. And vice versa.
Certainly you shouldn’t go kill somebody or rape a girl, no! But you haven’t reached the point where you can understand the actual meaning of “permitted” and “forbidden.” You’ve only sensed part of the truth.
Beginners learned how to establish parallels, by means of the Game’s symbols, between a piece of classical music and the formula for some law of nature. Experts and Masters of the Game freely wove the initial theme into unlimited combinations.
At about the age of six or seven, I realized that of all the invisible powers the one I was destined to be most strongly affected and dominated by was music.