“She wanted, out of a kind of mysterious vindictiveness born of despair, to torture us with her torture, to arraign us, the hale and hearty, in the place of God.”

“Art always reaches its peak where it becomes the life interest of a people.”

“For the first time in my life I had received an assurance that I had been of use to someone on this earth, and my astonishment at the thought that I, a commonplace, unsophisticated young officer, should really have the power to make someone else so happy knew no bounds.”

“But this first installation was by no means the last. Every year the Queen had some new fancy for beautifying her miniature kingdom with more highly artificial and more “natural” additions and alterations.”

“The Minister-President or the richest magnate could walk the streets of Vienna without anyone turning around, but a court actor or an opera singer was recognized by every salesgirl and every cabdriver.”

“One can run away from anything but oneself”

“That is how our arch-adventurer likes to live, moving on from explosion to explosion of fortune and misfortune.”

“For tradition also and always means inhibition.”

“All things considered, he stuck to his basic attitude of enjoying wealth by knowing that he had it, rather than by making a great display of it.”

“Ambition had never troubled me, so I decided to begin by watching life at my leisure for a few years, waiting until I finally felt tempted to find some circle of influence for myself.”

“Immer sind die Instinkte wissender als unsere wachen Gedanken.”

“A life without envy, hatred and lies was not a life worth living.”

“And it is only delusion, and not knowledge, that bestows happiness.”

“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.”

“soothing silence instead of an oppressive one.”

“And 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.”

“The longest voyage of discovery, the boldest adventure in the records of our race, had begun.”

“But we need to make a distinction: we can love this or that, but we cannot “form a marriage bond” unless it is with our own selves.”

“An intellect that does not have a fixed target is as good as lost. Whoever wants to be everywhere is nowhere. No wind blows for him who has no harbour.”

“We must “conserve the freedom of our soul and not mortgage it, except on those rare occasions when we deem it the right path”.”

“Books are my kingdom. And here I seek to reign as absolute lord.”

“his jest implies: “Anybody who wants to be a real musician must be able to set even a menu to music.”

“For vanity, too, inebriates; gratitude, too, intoxicates; tenderness, too, can blissfully confuse the senses.”

“He had no taste for his own company and avoided such an encounter as much as possible, for the last thing he wanted was to make close acquaintance with himself.”