the effect you had on me was the effect you could not help having. but you should stop considering it some particular malice on my part that i succumbed to that
i cannot believe that a kindly word, a quiet taking by the hand, a friendly look, could not have got me to do anything that was wanted of me.
not every child has the endurance and fearlessness to go on searching until it comes to the kindliness that lies beneath the surface
i felt a miserable specimen, and what’s more, not only in your eyes but in the eyes of the whole world, for you were for me the measure of all things.
i could enjoy what you gave, but only in humiliation, weariness, weakness, and with a sense of guilt. that was why i could be grateful to you for everything only as a beggar is, and could never show it by doing the right things.
i repeat for the tenth time: even in other circumstances i should probably have become a shy and nervous person, but it is a long dark road from there to where i have really come.
in keeping with my sluggishness and pedantry countless worries are involved in all this, but they are not decisive; they do, like worms, complete the work on the corpse
it is as if a person were a prisoner, and he had not only the intention to escape, which would perhaps be attainable, but also, and indeed simultaneously, the intention to rebuild the prison as a pleasure dome for himself.
sometimes i imagine the map of the world spread out and you stretched diagonally across it. and i feel as if i could consider living in only those regions that either are not covered by you or are not within your reach.