The sense of love stirred in him, the love one always feels for what one has lost, whether a child, a woman, or even pain.
Thinking of what he had done and was going to do, he thought, with love, even God is a failure.
No one can speak a monologue for long "alone: another
voice will always make itself heard: every monologue
sooner or later becomes a discussion.
This is how it ought to be: I am too old for emotion. I am too old to be a cheat. Lies are for the young. They have a lifetime of truth to recover in.
When he was young, he had thought love had something to do with understanding, but with age he knew that no human being understood another. Love was the wish to understand, and presently with constant failure the wish died, and love died too perhaps or changed into this painful affection, loyalty, pity. . . .
Если хочешь быть человеком, надо испить чашу до дна. Пусть сегодня она тебя миновала, завтра ты сам трусливо её избежал — всё равно, тебе непременно поднесут её в третий раз.
В сердце у нас живёт безжалостный тиран, готовый примириться с горем множества людей, если это принесёт счастье тем, кого мы любим.
Покажите мне счастливого человека, и я покажу вам либо самовлюблённость, эгоизм и злобу, либо полнейшую духовную слепоту.
He had been in Africa when his own child died. He had always thanked God that he had missed that. It seemed after all that one never really missed a thing. To be a human being one had to drink the cup.
He felt the loyalty we all feel to unhappiness the sense that that is where we really belong.