“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”

“Consider the herds that are feeding yonder: they do not know what is yesterday or today; they run about, eat, rest, digest, and run about again; and so from morning to night, and from day to day, closely bound by their short-lived pleasures and pains, and fastened to the stake of the moment, and therefore neither melancholy nor bored. This is a hard sight for man to see; for he prides himself on his humanity before the beasts, and yet looks with jealousy on their happiness. He wishes simply to live without satiety or pain, like the beast; yet it is in vain, for he will not wish it as the beast does. Man may ask the beast: "Why dost thou not speak to me of thy happiness, but only look at me?" The beast wants to answer too, and say: "Because I always forget what I wished to say"; but then he forgets this answer too, and keeps silent; and man wonders thereat. But he also wonders at himself, that he cannot learn to forget, but always clings to the past: however far or fast he run, that heavy chain runs with him. It is a marvel, the moment is there and gone, in a wink gone, before that nothing, afterwards nothing; and yet it returns again as a ghost, and disturbs the peace of a later moment.”

“There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.”