There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman__he white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles__he work of a shell.The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries__omething between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey__ startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.

Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness.

So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a number. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both. What wealth!

What did I fear, and why? _ I, to whom the night had beena more familiar facethan that of man __, in whom that element of hereditary superstition from which none of us is altogether free had given to solitude and darkness and silence only a more alluring interest and charm!

Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live!

When you succumb to cynicism, darkness, pessimism and sarcasm you are amplifying imbalance and negativity.