Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills

نحن قوم نرتاح للهزيمة أكثر من النصر، فمن طول الهزائم و كثرتها ترسبت نغمة الأسى في أعماقنا، فأحببنا الغناء الشجي و المسرحية المفجعة و البطل الشهيد.

And in a mad trance
Strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings
We decay
Like corpses in a charnel
Fear & Grief
Convulse is & consume us
Day by day
And cold hopes swarm
Like worms within
Our living clay

We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Sorrow comes in great waves...but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.

Quando nos deixamos cativar, é certo e sabido que algum dia alguma coisa nos há de fazer chorar.

Why not admit that it is not our paramount duty to weep with all those who are weeping, to suffer with all who are sad, to expose our heart to the passer-by for him to caress or stab? Tears and suffering and wounds are helpful to us only when they do not discourage our life.

We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means.

gönlümüzde kaygılar, kollarımızda boşluk,
geçici zevkler ve bitmek bilmez dert,
kışın güller, yaz ortasında buz,
belirsiz umut önümüzde ve kısa süren sevinç,
pişmanlık ve elem, ardımızda bıraktığımız
(aşkın utkusu iii, 115-119)

Wir sind alle dem Schicksal unterworfen [...] aber wir müssen so tun, als seien wir es nicht, sonst würden wir vor Verzweiflung sterben.

You think that enough?” said I.

“Yes,” said he, “and moreover it is all that we can do. If in addition we torture the man, we turn his grief into anger, and the humiliation he would otherwise feel for his wrong-doing is swallowed up by a hope of revenge for our wrong-doing to him.

لقد تضاربت الأحزان، فهلكت جميعًا

جبرنا على ان نكون احرارا و نحن نصنع اختياراتنا بين الالم و الهجر و اليأس

سارتر

We ourselve are the authors of almost all our woes and griefs, of which we so unreasonably complain.