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February 21, 2009

Goethe pegs it.

We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking.

Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

--Goethe, dead, and possessed of a superior perspective, speaks to Harry Haller, in Steppenwolf (1927)

Hermann_Hesse_1926_by_Gret_Widmann.jpeg

Hermann Hesse, 1929 (Photo: Gret Widman)

Posted by JD Hull at February 21, 2009 11:59 PM

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