Jacek

“Let no one tell me nothing is being communicated here! For the message to be inaccessible, and for one to immerse oneself in that contradiction—that also has its pleasure.”
― Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus

“To gather up enthusiasm for my work, I reminded myself how our recent sages, of blessed memory, devoted themselves to the Torah. For instance, there was the story of the author of the Face of Joshua, whose disciples once arrived late. "Why are you late?" he asked them when they came. "We were afraid to go out because of the cold," they replied. He raised his face from the book—and his beard was frozen hard to the table. "True," he said. "It is cold today." Or like the story of Rabbi Jacob Emden, who hired a servant to announce to him every hour, "Woe, another hour has gone," so that the illustrious scholar should give himself an account of what he had put right during that hour.”
― S.Y. Agnon, A Book that Was Lost: and Other Stories

“The moonlight returned and brightened. The Dead Sea shone like a barrel of oil, sparks of light shot out from it illuminating the mountainsides, and from the mountains one could see bonfires. Since I was sad, I thought of things that make one even sadder.”
― S.Y. Agnon, The Outcast & Other Tales

“He took the cigar out of his mouth and said, "Those people had God in their hearts."
I said to him in a whisper, "God exists now too."
"But not within us," he said.
I said to him: "A certain hasidic master was asked where the Holy One, blessed be He, dwells. He told them: Wherever He is allowed to enter, there He dwells.”
― S.Y. Agnon, A Book that Was Lost: and Other Stories