You
must study philosophy, even if you only have enough money to buy a lamp and oil
and the only time you can find is from midnight to cock-crow.
*
Good
night, dear friend. ‘Whom the gods love receives great joy and great sorrow.’
To navigate a stream needs no skill. But when our hearts and fates cast us down
to the bottom of the sea and fling us up into the sky, that forms the
helmsman.
*
The
fine autumn days are doing me a power of good. I’m still living alone with my
pupil in the garden. The family has moved to the city for the fair. The pure,
fresh air and the lovely light that is peculiar to this time of year, and the
peaceful earth with its darker green, with its dying green too, and with the
fruits of its trees gleaming through the leaves, the clouds, the mists, the
greater purity of the night skies –all this is closer to my heart than any
other period of nature. There is a tender, quiet spirit to this season.
*
The
more we are attacked by nothingness, which yawns around us like a chasm, or by
the thousandfold Thing of human society and activity that devoid of form, soul
or love persecutes and disperses us, the more passionate and intense and
violent our resistance must become.
*
And
Hyperion says: ‘Everywhere there remains a joy for us. True pain inspirits.
Whoever treads on his misery stands higher. And it is a marvellous thing that
only in our sufferings do we fully feel the soul’s freedom.’
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