"Life is like this little sweetheart. We dream of it and we love it in dreaming of it. But we must not try to live it. Like the little boy we throw ourselves into stupidity, not all at once, for in life everything is degraded gradually and by imperceptible degrees. After ten years we no longer recognize our dreams, or else we disown them, and we live like an ox for whatever grass we find to graze on at the moment."