“We live through myriads of seconds, but there is only one second among all these myriads which brings our whole inner world to the boil; the second in which, as Stendhal described, there suddenly takes place a crystallization in the supersaturated blood; a magical second like that of procreation, and, like it, hidden in the warm interior of one's own body, invisible, intangible, impalpable, a unique experience of mystery. No algebra of the soul can calculate it; no alchemy can divine it. Usually, even for ourselves, it remains unsearchable.”
Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D (1927)
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Stefan Zweig106
Austrian writer 1881–1942Related quotes
Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men
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As quoted in Boss Ket (1961) by Rosamond McPherson Young p. 194
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Context: The right of no nation depends upon the date of its birth or the size of its power. As there can be no second class citizens before the law of America, so—we believe—there can be no second-class nations before the law of the world community.
“It can take years to mold a dream. It takes only a fraction of a second for it to be shattered.”
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Source: The Kiss of Deception
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Source: Introduction to Fichte's Science of Knowledge (1797/1798), p. 17-18.