The Bride of Dreams

As one approaches my little city from the sea on a summer's day, one sees only the tall, round clump of trees on the ramparts and, overtopping it, the old bell-tower with its fa...

He had a pistol in each hand and repeated a few words of command over and over again, while from the brown, gleaming heads about us came, in sometimes angry, sometimes mournful,...

But when it became clear to him that I was seized with a glowing passion for Emmy Tenders - and he must indeed have been very deaf and blind not to notice my very apparent confu...

Thus everything might have come out right, but things do not run so smoothly in this world. I was seventeen and Emmy twenty. There still followed weeks, long months - melancholy...

This success was not the result of a miracle, nor of faith in Christ, but probably of the glad shock produced by mother's letter and of a strong auto-suggestion. But it seemed t...

I am not an enemy of King Demos, and I know that his earthly realm is at hand. May he replace and rule all kings until King Christ rules supreme among men. I wish him prosperity...

Why did I make this tremendous effort? What do I gain by it? And all these others, none of whom, forsooth, praise life as so glorious and desirable a joy, what induces them to c...

And many a night, when it is warm and the sea calm and the doves coo in the softly whispering elms on the city walls, I wander out of my quiet little city and gaze over the smoo...

"Cynicism! hypocrisy!" brother Michael cried out with a silencing gesture. "My dear young man, how wildly you throw your rotten apples. A dog is a good-natured and clever animal...

Not only the baseness, but also the absurdities of dreams, exasperated me. Night after night I was imposed upon and led about by the nose in the most ridiculous fashion. It ofte...

As my plan of entering the priesthood had come to naught, we were all three glad to leave the sultry city of Rome. We went to Como, occupying our villa at the lake. It was an ol...

A violent agitation seized me. My thoughts and feelings were stirred to commotion like a bee-hive which someone has knocked against. Vainly I sought to restore harmony and peace...

I could not have borne this existence calmly, without the stay of my nocturnal experiences, without the constant preoccupation with the miracle that again and again befell me, w...

I saw the grouping into rich and poor, because the wholesome craving for luxury and abundance is corrupted and weakened through neglect of the tie of love, so that the individua...

I asked directly for the hotel keeper. At my first visit he had not made his appearance. From the out-house, after a long wait, a big lazy Dutch man came shuffling on in a very...

"Oh, but my God, Vico, what possesses you? You are contemplating the greatest wrong, the deepest offence to me, the disgrace of your family, the eternal ruin of your soul - you...

"I do better, I assure you of profound love. So profound that I do surely believe it will be true. But what would my faithfulness be to you if love grew weaker? It would become...

"That I shall explain to you. Humanity consists of two principal kinds - of herd-men and seceders. Both, Christ has need of. The herd-men form the mighty unity through which he...

even then there was a mysterious, tender quality of pain in my love, independent of all the considerations and cares concerning present and future - like a gentle, never wholly...

"First of all, that which everyone condemns and everyone nevertheless maintains - the remuneration of the rich simply because he is rich, even though he does nothing to deserve...

"I should have thought it so lovely if my baby had been born in Holland, amid the green pastures in a bright pretty little Dutch house, under the lovely Dutch clouds, near our s...

On this happy day these two truths were firmly rooted in my soul: First, that humanity is on its upward course, that the wound of God is healing, that a new common welfare, surp...