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1 " But love truly becomes love only when, no longer an embryo developing painfully in the darkness of the body, it ventures to confess itself with lips and breath. However hard it tries to remain a chrysalis, a time comes when the intricate tissue of the cocoon tears, and out it falls, dropping from the heights to the farthest depths, falling with redoubled force into the startled heart. "
― Stefan Zweig , Journey into the Past
2 " He listened yet more intently to what was within him, to the past, to see whether that voice of memory truly foretelling the future would not speak to him again, revealing the present to him as well as the past. "
3 " Neither she nor he was the same any more, yet they were searching for each other in a vain effort, fleeing one another, persisting in disembodied, powerless efforts like those black spectres at their feet. "
4 " Madness,” he exclaimed to himself, in astonishment, faltering. “Madness! What do they want? Once again, once again!” War once again, war that had so recently shattered his whole life? With a strange shudder, he looked at those young faces, staring at the black mass on the move in ranks of four, like a square strip of film running, unrolling out of a narrow alley as if out of a dark box, and every face it showed was instantly rigid with bitter determination, a threat, a weapon. Why was this threat so noisily uttered on a mild June evening, hammered home in a gently dreaming city? “What do they want? What do they want?” The question still had him by the throat. Only just now he had seen the world in bright, musical clarity, with the light of love and tenderness shining over it, he had been part of a melody of kindness and trust. And suddenly the iron steps of that marching throng were treading everything down, men girding themselves for the fray, men of a thousand different kinds, shouting with a thousand voices, yet expressing only one thing in their eyes and their onward march, hate, hate, hate. "
5 " From that first meeting he had loved this woman, but passionately as his feelings surged over him, following him even to his dreams, the crucial factor that would shake him to the core was still lacking - his conscious realization that what, denying his true feelings, he still called admiration, respect and devotion was in fact love - a burning, unbounded, absolute and passionate love. Some kind of servile instinct in him forcibly suppressed that realization; she was too distant, too far away, too high above him, a radiant woman surrounded by a circle of stars, armoured by her wealth and by all that he had ever known of women before. It would have seemed blasphemous to think of her as a sexual being, subject to the same laws of the blood as the few other women who had come his way during his youth spent in servitude [...]. No, this was different. She shone down from another sphere, beyond desire, pure and inviolable, and even in his most passionate dreams he did not venture so far as to undress her. In boyish confusion, he loved the fragrance of her presence, appreciating all her movements as if they were music, glad of her confidence in him and always fearing to show her any of the overwhelming emotion that stirred within him, an emotion still without a name, but long since fully formed and glowing in its place of concealment.But love truly becomes love only when, no longer an embryo developing painfully in the darkness of the body, it ventures to confess itself with lips and breath. However hard it tries to remain a chrysalis, a time comes when the intricate tissue of the cocoon tears, and out it falls, dropping from the heights to the farthest depths, falling with redoubled force into the startled heart. "
6 " Η αγάπη όμως γίνεται πραγματική αγάπη μόνον όταν πάψει να κρύβεται εμβρυϊκά σκοτεινή στο εσωτερικό του σώματος με τρόπο επώδυνο, αλλά όταν τολμήσει να κατονομαστεί με την ανάσα και τα χείλη, όταν τολμήσει να ομολογήσει την ύπαρξη της. Όσο επίμονα και αν αυτό το συναίσθημα κρύβεται στο κουκούλι του, πάντα έρχεται μια στιγμή που σκίζει ξαφνικά τον μπερδεμένο ιστό και, ορμώντας από ψηλά στα μεγαλύτερα βάθη, πέφτει με διπλάσια ορμή στην τρομαγμένη καρδιά. "
7 " Κι ωστόσο, παρόλο που πίστευε ότι τα συναισθήματα του εξακολουθούσαν να είναι αμετάβλητα, η παράφορη εσωτερική ένταση που τα περιέβαλλε άρχισε σιγά σιγά να χαλαρώνει. Δεν είναι στον χαρακτήρα της ανθρώπινης φύσης να ζει μόνο με τις αναμνήσεις και, όπως τα φυτά και όπως κάθε δημιούργημα της φύσης χρειάζονται τη θρεπτική δύναμη της γης και φως από τον ουρανό, ώστε τα χρώματα τους να μην ξεθωριάσουν και τα πέταλα τους να μη μαραθούν και πέσουν, έτσι ακόμα και τα όνειρα, ακόμα και αυτά που μοιάζουν υπερφυσικά, χρειάζονται μια συγκεκριμένη ποσότητα τροφής από τις αισθήσεις, πρέπει να υποβοηθούνται τρυφερά και με εικόνες, διαφορετικά το αίμα τους αραιώνει και η λάμψη τους χάνεται. "
