Gustav Klimt, Death and Life, 1915

“We are not so badly off that we have to be as badly off as Stoics.”

— The Gay Science, §326 (excerpt).

Sirius

Hunter S. Thompson in Puerto Rico 1960

“A young boy who had just stolen his father’s car and crashed it, takes one final puff on his cigarette before facing the consequences. (1974).”

I’ll tell you something banal.We’re emotional illiterates. And not only you and I—practically everybody, that’s the depressing thing. We’re taught everything about the body and about agriculture in Madagascar and about the square root of pi, or whatever the hell it’s called, but not a word about the soul. We’re abysmally ignorant, about both ourselves and others.

— Ingmar Berman, from the screenplay Persona (AB Svensk, 1966)

Later that Night  -   Mattias Härenstam, 2014.

I’m asking You God, to give me what You have left.
Give me those things that others never ask of You.
I don’t ask You for rest, or tranquillity.
Not that of the spirit, the body, or the mind.
I don’t ask You for wealth, or success, or even health.
All those things are asked of You so much Lord,
that you can’t have any left to give.
Give me instead Lord what You have left.
Give me what others don’t want.
I want uncertainty and doubt.
I want torment and battle.
And I ask that You give them to me now and forever Lord,
so I can be sure to always have them,
because I won’t always have the strength to ask again.
But give me also the courage, the energy,
and the spirit to face them.
I ask You these things Lord, because I can’t ask them of myself.

Written by Lieutenant Andre Zirnheld, circa 1942
Translated from the original French by Robert Petersen

Andrew Wyeth - Distant Thunder, 1961