Status Updates From The Lifted Veil

"I felt a sort of pitying anguish over the pathos of my own lot: the lot of a being finely organised for pain, but with hardly any fibres that responded to pleasure––to whom the idea of future evil robbed the present of its joy, and for whom the idea of future good did not still the uneasiness of a present yearning or a present dread. "

"What if I saw into the heart of Bertha, the matured woman - Bertha, my wife? Bertha, the girl, was a fascinating secret to me still: I yearned to be assured of her love. The fear of poison is feeble against the sense of thirst."

This is going to be a slow read for me.
"But the poet’s sensibility without his voice—the poet’s sensibility that finds no vent but in silent tears on the sunny bank, when the noonday light sparkles on the water, or in an inward shudder at the sound of harsh human tones, the sight of a cold human eye—this dumb passion brings with it a fatal solitude of soul in the society of one’s fellow-men."