Childhood

Self-conceit is a sentiment entirely incompatible with genuine sorrow, and it is so firmly engrafted on human nature that even the most profound sorrow can seldom expel it altogether. Vanity in sorrow expresses itself by a desire to appear either stricken with grief or unhappy or brave: and this ignoble desire which we do not acknowledge but which hardly ever leaves us even in the deepest trouble robs our grief of its strength, dignity and sincerity.

It never occurred to my mind that possibly poor Ilinka was suffering far less from bodily pain than from the thought that five companions for whom he may have felt a genuine liking had, for no reason at all, combined to hurt and humiliate him.

I often think with regret of that fresh, beautiful feeling of boundless, disinterested love which came to an end without having ever found self-expression or return. It is strange how, when a child, I always longed to be like grown-up people, and yet how I have often longed, since childhood's days, for those days to come back to me!

What better time is there in our lives than when the two best of virtues-innocent gaiety and a boundless yearning for affection-are our sole objects of pursuit?

Only the people who are capable to love immensely can, also, feel immense pain: but that same need of love serves them as the cure against pain and it heals them. Because of that, mental nature is stronger than physical nature. Pain never kills.

... to stop loving and, at the same time, fall in love means to love twice as strong than before.

Out of all the vices, the most difficult is ingratitude.

Not having yet passed through those bitter experiences which enforce upon older years circumspection and coldness, I deprived myself of the pure delight of a fresh, childish instinct for the absurd purpose of trying to resemble grown-up people.

O, happy, happy, irretrievably childhood! How can one not love it and cherish memories of it. Those memories refresh, raise my soul and serve as the pool of the most beautiful delights.

Utangaç insanların ızdırabı, haklarında oluşan düşünceyi bilmemekten kaynaklanır; bu düşünce -ne olursa olsun- açıkça ifade edilir edilmez ızdırap sona erer.