Markings, Part 2

About Markings.

6. What is one to do on a bleak day but drift for awhile through the streets -- drift with the stream?
Slowly, with the gravity of an inanimate object, now coming to a standstill, now turning, where currents meet, in listless leisurely gyrations. Slow -- and grey. The November day has reached the hour when the light is dying behind a low cold bank of cloud, but the twilight brings no promise of mitigation or peace.
Slow and grey -- He searches every face. But the people aimlessly streaming along the grey ditches of the streets are all like himself -- atoms in whom the radioactivity is extinct, and force has tied its endless chain around nothing. (24)

7. The one reaction was no less genuine than the other. We may be willing to turn our backs on life, but we still complain like children when life does not grant our wishes. (30)

8. At any rate, your contempt for your fellow human beings does not prevent you, with a well-guarded self-respect, from trying to win their respect. (41)

9. Only tell others what is of importance to them. Only ask them what you need to know. In both cases, that is, limit the conversation to what the speaker really possesses. -- Argue only in order to reach a conclusion. Think aloud only with those to whom this means something. Don't let small talk fill up the time and the silence except as a medium for bearing unexpressed messages between two people who are attuned to each other. A dietary for those who have learned by experience the truth of the saying, "For every idle word...." But hardly popular in social life. (44)

10. Hunger is my native place in the land of the passions.
Hunger for fellowship, hunger for righteousness -- for a fellowship founded on righteousness, and a righteousness attained in fellowship.
Only life can satisfy the demands of life. And this hunger of mine can be satisfied for the simple reason that the nature of life is such that I can only realize my individuality by becoming a bridge for others, a stone in the temple of righteousness.
Don't be afraid of yourself, live your individuality to the full -- but for the good of others. Don't copy others in order to buy fellowship, or make convention your law instead of living the righteousness.
To become free and responsible. For this alone was man created, and he who fails to take the Way which could have been his shall be lost eternally. (53)