Adalbert Stifter

“Among the books there were also some containing bombast. They didn't try to portray Nature as it is within and outside of man; rather, they tried to make it more beautiful, seeking to elicit certain effects. I turned away from them. If reality isn't sacred to them, how are they capable of creating something more beautiful than God's Creation?”

“Everything that God sends us is beautiful, even though we may not understand it - and we only need to give it some proper thought to see that what God gives is just sheer happiness; the suffering is what we add to it.”

“How great inexperience and innocence is. On the authority of their parents they go to a place where they could meet their death; for the Zirder in flood is very dangerous and, given the ignorance of the children, can be incalculably dangerous. But they know nothing of death. Even if they speak its name, they do not know its essence and their aspiring life has no feeling for annihilation. If they were on the brink of death themselves, they would not know it and they would die before they found it out.”

“Great beauty and youth capture our attention, excite a deep pleasure; however, why shouldn't our souls gaze at a countenance over which the years have passed? Isn't there a story there, one unknown, full of pain or beauty, which pours its reflection into the features, a story we can read with some compassion or at least get a slight hint of its meaning? The young point toward the future; the old tell of a past.”

“Don't the overwhelming majority believe that mankind is the crowning achievement of Creation, that man is better than everything, even things we haven't yet investigated? And don't those people who aren't able to escape the bonds of their own ego think that the entire Universe, even the countless worlds of outer space, is just a backdrop for this ego? And yet it might be quite different.”

“My heart was full and uplifted; it seemed that in my soul the question arose whether such things as Art, literature, science encompassed and completed life or whether there was still something in the distance which encompassed it even more completely and filled it with a far greater happiness.”

“Between the wrinkles of age and her features which indicated a number of years resided a beauty that was touching and awakened trust. Since by now I had observed many faces quite closely in order to sketch them, I fully realized that it was more than mere beauty, it was the soul which shone through so kindly and self-contained, which had such a striking effect on whoever came into contact with her.”