...And if the suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price.
There are strange friendships: two friends almost want to devour each other, and they spend their entire lives living that way, but meanwhile they cannot part.
To begin with, at home I spent most of my time reading. I wanted to stifle all that was continuously boiling up inside me through external impressions.
Out of all external impressions, reading was the only one possible for me. Of course, reading helped a lot - it excited, delighted and tormented me. But at times it bored me to death. For all that I still wanted to be doing things and I would suddenly plunge into dark, subterranean, vile, not so much depravity as petty dissipation.
My mean, trivial, lusts were keen and fiery as a result of my constant, morbid irritability. The surges were hysterical, always accompanied by tears and convulsion. Apart from reading I had nowhere to turn - I mean, there was nothing in my surroundings that I could respect then or to which I might have been attracted.
I understand solidarity in sin among men; solidarity in retribution I also understand; but what solidarity in sin do little children have?
Moreover, dreadful ennui was seething within me, a hysterical craving for contradictions and contrasts would make its presence felt.
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...And if the suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price.
I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is
There are strange friendships: two friends almost want to devour each other, and they spend their entire lives living that way, but meanwhile they cannot part.
They understood nothing, none of life's realities, and, I swear to you, this was what made me most indignant.
It remained inaccessible to my mind, even though my heart unconsciously became increasingly suffused with it.
To begin with, at home I spent most of my time reading. I wanted to stifle all that was continuously boiling up inside me through external impressions.
Out of all external impressions, reading was the only one possible for me. Of course, reading helped a lot - it excited, delighted and tormented me. But at times it bored me to death. For all that I still wanted to be doing things and I would suddenly plunge into dark, subterranean, vile, not so much depravity as petty dissipation.
My mean, trivial, lusts were keen and fiery as a result of my constant, morbid irritability. The surges were hysterical, always accompanied by tears and convulsion. Apart from reading I had nowhere to turn - I mean, there was nothing in my surroundings that I could respect then or to which I might have been attracted.