Down there, however⁠—all talking is in vain! There, forgetting and passing-by are the best wisdom: that have I learned now!

He who would understand everything in man must handle everything. But for that I have too clean hands.

I do not like even to inhale their breath; alas! that I have lived so long among their noise and bad breaths!

O blessed stillness around me! O pure odours around me! How from a deep breast this stillness fetcheth pure breath! How it hearkeneth, this blessed stillness!

But down there⁠—there speaketh everything, there is everything misheard. If one announce one’s wisdom with bells, the shopmen in the marketplace will out-jingle it with pennies!

Everything among them talketh; no one knoweth any longer how to understand. Everything falleth into the water; nothing falleth any longer into deep wells.