We live through myriads of seconds, yet it is always one,
just one, that casts our entire inner world into turmoil, the second when (as
Stendhal has described it) the internal inflorescence, already steeped in every
kind of fluid, condenses and crystallizes—a magical second, like the moment of
generation, and like that moment concealed in the warm interior of the
individual life, invisible, untouchable, beyond the reach of feeling, a secret
experienced alone. No algebra of the mind can calculate it, no alchemy of
premonition divine it, and it can seldom perceive itself. For the more a man limits himself, the
nearer he is on the other hand to what is limitless; it is precisely those who
are apparently aloof from the world who build for themselves a remarkable and
thoroughly individual world in miniature, using their own special equipment,
termite-like.
Stefan Zweig
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