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1 " ...the face before him was like nothing he had ever seen before. It was smooth, with a black strip of cloth tied over its forehead, and yet it was deeply furrowed, like the sea, that can have tall waves but not a wrinkle on the surface. The eyes were like dark chasms and yet they were the eyes of a human being and not empty sockets. The skin was a greenish olive colour and looked as if it were made of bronze... "
― Gustav Meyrink , The Green Face
2 " Las causas no podemos reconocerlas nunca, todo lo que percibimos son los efectos. Lo que identificamos como causa en realidad no es más que un… presagio. Si suelto este lápiz, se caerá al suelo. Que el hecho de soltarlo constituya la causa de la caída puede creerlo un estudiante, pero yo no. Soltarlo es sencillamente el presagio infalible de la caída. "
3 " All around were people such as the eternal petty bourgeois of all lands eyes with the instinctive hatred of the bandy-legged mongrel for a thoroughbred, beings that will ever remain a mystery to the masses, arousing both contempt and envy, creatures that can wade through blood without batting an eyelid and yet swoon at the screech of a fork across a plate, who will pull out a revolver at the slightest suggestion of a sneer yet calmly smile when caught cheating at cards, for whom vices, the very thought of which makes the ordinary citizen shudder, are commonplace and who would rather go thirsty for days than drink out of a glass another has used, who accept God as a matter of course and yet shut themselves off from Him because they find Him boring, who are considered hollow by people who crudely assume that what, in the course of generations, has become the essence of such creatures, is mere veneer and outward show; they are neither hollow nor the opposite, they are beings who have lost their souls and have therefore become the incarnation of evil for the multitude which will never possess a soul, they are aristocrats who would rather die than crawl to anyone, who, with unerring instinct, spot the plebeian within their fellow-manand place him lower than the animals and yet fall down before him if he happens to be sitting on the throne, they are lords of the earth who can become helpless as a child at the slightest frown on the face of destiny, instruments of the Devil and at the same time his plaything. "
4 " In every name there is a hidden force and when we repeat that name over and over we draw into our blood that spiritual force, which in time, finally transforms our whole body. "
5 " As usual the empty-headed were loudest in proclaiming their shallow explanation that the fever raging in the hearts and minds of the survivors was merely the result of the disturbance of their comfortable existence. The cause went much deeper.Spectres, monstrous yet without form and only discernible through the devastation they wrought, had been called up by faceless and power-hungry bureaucrats in their secret seances and had devoured millions of innocent victims before returning to the sleep from which they had been roused. But there was another phantom, still more horrible, that had long since caught the foul stench of a decaying civilisation in its gaping nostrils and now raised its snake-wreathed countenance from the abyss where it had lain, to mock humanity with the realisation that the juggernaut they had driven for the last four years in the belief it would clear the world for a new generation of free men was a treadmill in which they were trapped for all time. "
6 " Вокруг сидели те, к кому мещане всех стран спокон веку питают врожденную ненависть, подобно тому, как кривоногая деревенская дворняжка ненавидит статного породистого пса, - кто всегда остается загадкой для широких масс, предметом их всегдашнего презрения и одновременно черной мучительной зависти, - кто может и глазом не моргнув искупаться в крови и упасть в обморок при звуке вилки, царапающей по тарелке, - кто от одного лишь косого взгляда хватается за пистолет и невозмутимо усмехается, когда его ловят на нечистой игре, - кто каждый день изобретает какой-нибудь новый порок, от которого у добропорядочного бюргера волосы встают дыбом, и предпочитает три дня изнывать от жажды, чем выпить из чужого стакана, - кто верит во Всевышнего всем своим существом и тем не менее отпадает от Бога, считая Его неинтересным, - кого просвещенные простолюдины называют "надменными пустышками", с тупой самоуверенностью принимая за внешний лоск то, что в действительности, выпестованное многими поколениями предков, стало истинной сутью этих качественно иных существ, которые уже не являются ни "полными", ни "пустыми", - создания, у которых больше нет души, и, стало быть, понятие "отвратительный" к ним неприменимо, оно для толпы, которая изначально отвращена, ибо никогда не имела души, - аристократы, готовые скорее умереть, чем просить пощады, они, движимые безошибочным инстинктом крови, под любым обличьем угадывают плебс, ставя его ниже животного, и первые беспрекословно склоняются пред самым низким подонком, когда тот по воле изменчивого случая вдруг оказывается на троне, - сильные мира сего, они становятся беспомощней ребенка, стоит только слегка нахмуритсья судьбе, - беспощадные орудия Сатаны, она одновременно его любимые игрушки... "