"Study the past if you would define the future." The Analects of Confucius

The soul, being a harmony, can never utter a note at variance with the tensions and relaxations and vibrations and other affections of the strings out of which she is composed; she can only follow, she cannot lead them? ...And yet do we not now discover the soul to be doing the exact opposite—leading the elements of which she is believed to be composed; almost always opposing and coercing them in all sorts of ways throughout life... threatening and reprimanding the desires, passions, fears, as if talking to a thing which is not herself... The Trials Of Socrates

I often ardently perceived a longing for relief, the desire for a proper confession, but I also felt in advance that I would be unable to tell and explain things correctly to either my father or mother. I knew that they would receive my words amicably, they would carefully spare my feelings, in fact, pity me, but they wouldn’t fully understand me, and the whole thing would be looked on as a sort of minor infraction, whereas it was actually my fate. Demian

“All writing seems futile to me, and it really is. The best would probably be for me to go to Vienna and take you away; I may even do it, although you don’t want me to.” (9 July 1920) Letters To Milena