don’t know what to do—not I. God forgive me, but I am very impatient! I wish—but I don’t know what to wish without a sin. Yet I wish it would please God to take me to his mercy!—I can meet with none here.—What a world is this!—What is there in it desirable? The good we hope for so strangely mixed, that one knows not what to wish for! And one half of mankind tormenting the other and being tormented themselves in tormenting. > > ii . What I hate is myself—when I think that one has to take so much, to be happy, out of the lives of others, and that one isn’t happy even then. One does it to cheat one’s self and to stop one’s mouth—but that is only, at the best, for a little. The wretched self is always there, always making us somehow a fresh anxiety. What it comes to is that it’s not, that it’s never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to take . The only safe thing is to give. It’s what plays
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