Without God All Things Are Permitted.

Imagine That You Are Creating A Fabric Of Human Destiny With The Object Of Making Men Happy In The End, Giving Them Peace And Rest At Last. Imagine That You Are Doing This But That It Is Essential And Inevitable To Torture To Death Only One Tiny Creature...in Order To Found That Edifice On Its Unavenged Tears. Would You Consent To Be The Architect On Those Conditions? Tell Me. Tell The Truth.

In A Morbid Condition Of The Brain, Dreams Often Have A Singular Actuality, Vividness, And Extraordinary Semblance Of Reality. At Times Monstrous Images Are Created, But The Setting And The Whole Picture Are So Truth-like And Filled With Details So Delicate, So Unexpectedly, But So Artistically Consistent, That The Dreamer, Were He An Artist Like Pushkin Or Turgenev Even, Could Never Have Invented Them In The Waking State. Such Sick Dreams Always Remain Long In The Memory And Make A Powerful Impression On The Overwrought And Deranged Nervous System.

I Will Not And Cannot Believe That Evil Is The Normal Condition Of Mankind.

For, After All, You Do Grow Up, You Do Outgrow Your Ideals, Which Turn To Dust And Ashes, Which Are Shattered Into Fragments; And If You Have No Other Life, You Just Have To Build One Up Out Of These Fragments.

And So I Ask Myself: 'where Are Your Dreams?' And I Shake My Head And Mutter: 'how The Years Go By!' And I Ask Myself Again: 'what Have You Done With Those Years? Where Have You Buried Your Best Moments? Have You Really Lived? Look,' I Say To Myself, 'how Cold It Is Becoming All Over The World!' And More Years Will Pass And Behind Them Will Creep Grim Isolation. Tottering Senility Will Come Hobbling, Leaning On A Crutch, And Behind These Will Come Unrelieved Boredom And Despair. The World Of Fancies Will Fade, Dreams Will Wilt And Die And Fall Like Autumn Leaves From The Trees. . . .