Dover Publications

I think my liver hurts

though afterwards I'll certainly gnash my teeth at myself and suffer from insomnia for a few months out of shame. Such is my custom

And now I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and utterly futile consolation that it is even impossible for an intelligent man seriously to become anything, and only fools become something.

to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness

I'm to blame, first, because I'm more intelligent than everyone around me.

For I would surely be able to do nothing with my magnanimity: neither to forgive, because my offender might have hit me according to the laws of nature, and the laws of nature cannot be forgiven; nor to forget, because even though it's the laws of nature, it's still offensive.

Of course, nothing remains for it but to wave the whole thing aside with its little paw and, with a smile of feigned contempt, in which it does not believe itself, slip back shamefacedly into its crack. There, in its loathsome, stinking underground, our offended, beaten-down, and derided mouse at once immerses itself in cold, venomous, and, above all, everlasting spite.

“How a neck and wing in a friar’s plate of tinola can spoil the happiness of a celebration.”

“How a neck and wing in a friar’s plate of tinola can spoil the happiness of a celebration.”