Kaisei

“Together they repeat, ''we are, we are, because we know, because we can tell each other the words of knowledge, of free and absolute consciousness.'' Thus do they stupefy one another.

Having nothing and able to give nothing, they let themselves sink into words that feign communication, because none of them can make his world be the world of the others; they feign words containing the absolute world, and with words they nourish their boredom, making themselves a poultice for the pain; with words they show what they do not know and what they need in order to soothe the pain or make themselves numb to it. Each word contains mystery, and they entrust themselves to words, weaving with them thereby a new, tacitly agreed-upon veil over the obscurity: 'ornaments of the darkness'.”
― Carlo Michelstaedter, Persuasion and Rhetoric

“Nothing is so sure as the final oblivion.”
― Pär Lagerkvist, The Dwarf

“If I am hungry,reality is nothing more to me than an ensemble of more or less edible things. If I am thirsty, reality is more or less liquid, and more or less potable. If I am sleepy, it is a great bed more or less hard.If I am not hungry, not thirsty, not sleepy, and do not need any other determinate thing, the world is a large ensemble of grays that are I don’t know what but that certainly are not made to cheer me up.”
― Carlo Michelstaedter, Persuasion and Rhetoric

“Life is all one long hard thing.
He must have the courage to feel alone, to look his own pain in the face, bearing the entire weight of it.”
― Carlo Michelstaedter, Persuasion and Rhetoric