"We are in the 'peat formation period' - Quite right! At least, the formation of granite is already long past, the formation of sedimentary rock done with, and for a good while we have presumably been deeply absorbed in the formation of peat."

"I certainly know that it goes with states as it does with individual people, and that an individual who has never been any good at anything is always in a terrible hurry to rush into the future and never dares to look back for fear that the abomination of desolation lying behind him will turn him to stone"
[...] and it has, of course, become almost a Sprichwort [saying] to become "religious" when one cannot make good in the world.
[...] just as in England one sells one's corpse to the dissecting room, in the same way here one will sell one's body to be used as [an] editor
[...] "[the] so-called Bernhardian short novel"

"if what [he] contributed up to [this] point [is] not rather to be regarded as a little early parsley for the strong soup of which there is still only talk-" ( )