Sublime

"This here," he said playing with it, "is a stone, and will, after a certain time, perhaps turn into soil, and will turn from soil into a plant or animal or human being. In the past, I would have said: This stone is just a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of the Maja; but because it might be able to become also a human

He sensed quite strongly that this blind love for his son was a passion, something very human—that it was Samsara, a murky spring of dark waters. At the same time, he felt nonetheless that it was not worthless but necessary, that it came from the essence of his own being. This pleasure also must be atoned for, the pain also had to be endured, and t

Thomas Mann’s Confessions of Felix Krüll,