8 Quotes by Eduard von Keyserling

We can be suffering from terrible grief, we can be very unhappy, and yet none of that can withstand the joy of stretching out our legs comfortably after a long and tiring walk.

She lay there, her arms raised, her hands folded on top of her head, her eyes wide open, and observed how the grey-blue light penetrated into the room through the white-and-red-striped curtains, picking out the washstand, the two crude chairs and the tall yellow wardrobe in the gloom, illuminating the room without bringing it to life, without, as it were, waking it up. And it seemed to Doralice that this room, as small as a ship's cabin, was in no way connected to her.

Baron Buttlär led his wife out to dance, but only after she resisted for a moment: "But Buttlär, aren't we the old folk?" Hilmar danced with Lolo, and Wedig, so red-faced and excited that it looked as if he were on the verge of tears, asked Doralice for a dance. Hair twirled there in the open space; red, gently trembling light penetrated through the trees and flooded over them. Behind the birches, though, something seemed to be burning, it was the sea glittering in the sunset.

Doralice looked out at the sea searching for Hans' boat. She did not love the sea with its constant drowsy glitter. It was always there, one could see it from everywhere, one could hear it everywhere, everyone spoke of it: the monosyllabic fishermen, when they spoke, spoke of the sea, her uncommunicative husband, when he spoke, spoke of the sea. For her, though, the sea seemed to exhale a boundless, oppressive loneliness.

And so they sat next to each other and Doralice waited. She did nothing but wait, because there are events that have to happen first, before we can think about anything else.

Later, I could be truly unhappy, and perhaps write some poetry.

So he had upset her once again, but these days that seemed unavoidable. Did it not seem as if love were an arrangement that bound two people together so that they could torment each other?

As for Baron Buttlär, well...he had a wonderful blond moustache. Whenever he came to Berlin he consumed a great deal of champagne and pursued love affairs. A moustache like that made such behaviour practically obligatory, and it also made fine, upstanding fathers and husbands anxious.